United States v. Throckmorton

United States v. Throckmorton
Supreme Court of the United States
Decided October 1, 1878
Full case name	United States v. Throckmorton
Citations	98 U.S. 61 (more) 25 L.Ed. 93
Holding
State interest in resolving litigation and preventing double jeopardy bars courts of equity from untimely reconsideration of decided cases where a party alleges evidence before the court during the proceeding it had opportunity to impeach was fraudulent. District of California affirmed
Court membership
Chief Justice Morrison Waite Associate Justices Nathan Clifford · Noah H. Swayne Samuel F. Miller · Stephen J. Field William Strong · Joseph P. Bradley Ward Hunt · John M. Harlan
Case opinion
Majority	Miller, joined by unanimous
Laws applied
Common law of civil procedure

United States v. Throckmorton (98 U.S. 61) is an 1878 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on civil procedure, specifically res judicata, in cases heard at equity. A unanimous Court affirmed an appeal of a decision by the District Court for California upholding a Mexican-era land claim, holding that collateral estoppel bars untimely motions to set aside the verdict where the purportedly fraudulent evidence has already been considered and a decision reached. In the opinion it distinguished between that kind of fraud, which it called intrinsic, and extrinsic fraud, in which deceptive actions exterior to the proceeding prevented a party, or potential party, to the action from becoming aware of the possibility they could vindicate their rights in court.^[1][2]

The land claim at issue had been filed with the district court in the early 1850s by Richardson, a settler who had lived in California since 1838. He had followed Mexican procedures; Mexican government records verified this and suggested that he would receive the grant but the final decree had never been sent. So, the U.S. federal government claimed, he went to former Mexican governor Manuel Micheltorena with his land claim pending and obtained from him a backdated decree, supported by perjured affidavits from purported witnesses to the signing. Only in the 1870s, while reviewing other paperwork, did government lawyers in the Attorney General's office learn of this and bring the case.

Justice Samuel Freeman Miller found little precedent supporting the government's position, and much in opposition, including not only decisions of American courts but those of English courts dating to the beginning of the 18th century. He also cited established legal principles of double jeopardy and the state's interest in not having litigation continue indefinitely. On the facts of the case, he noted that the original petition had taken the court five years to approve, and it was thoroughly inspected, or could have been, by the government's lawyers at the time. Nor did the government offer any new evidence of the fraud, or indicate that the Attorney General had authorized the new litigation.

The rule laid down in Throckmorton has been seen as problematized by Marshall v. Holmes, a decision issued 13 years later in a similar case seeking to revisit a result due to the use of allegedly forged evidence; in it a dictum suggested that courts could set aside verdicts in cases of intrinsic fraud if they found the results obtained to be unconscionable. A circuit split developed over which case was controlling during the late 1930s, but the Court declined to resolve it, although it has modified and clarified the rule in several decisions since then; Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b) has also limited Throckmorton's applicability. The Third Circuit and several states have rejected Throckmorton in favor of Marshall.