Opinion of the Court.

fixing or locating the line of the road under the act of 1866. The records of those cases having been introduced in the present suit, there is no room for doubt if those records are competent evidence-as to what was in issue and what was adjudged in the former cases. The maps which in this case are relied upon by the United States as maps of definite location, and which the Southern Pacific Railroad Company denies to be of that character, are the identical maps which the Government relied on in the former cases, and the same which that company referred to and made part of its answer in the former litigation, and which were adjudged by this court, in conformity with the contention of the Government, to be valid maps of definite location, the acceptance of which made it impossible for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to acquire any interest in any lands granted to the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company that were forfeited to the United States by the act of 1886.

It is said, however, that, under the pleadings and evidence in this collateral proceeding, it is open to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to renew the contest as to the sufficiency of the maps of 1872 filed by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company and to show that they were not maps of definite location.

Is this position consistent with the settled rule of law as to the conclusiveness, between parties and their privies, of the final determination by a court of competent jurisdiction of matters put in issue by the pleadings?

The importance of this question, independently of the magnitude of the interests to be affected by our decision, and of the earnest contention of learned counsel, justifies a reference to some of the adjudged cases, showing the grounds upon which this salutary rule rests.

The general principle announced in numerous cases is that a right, question or fact distinctly put in issue and directly determined by a court of competent jurisdiction, as a ground of recovery, cannot be disputed in a subsequent suit between the same parties or their privies; and even if the second suit is for a different cause of action, the right, question or fact

Opinion of the Court.

once so determined must, as between the same parties or their privies, be taken as conclusively established, so long as the judgment in the first suit remains unmodified. This general rule is demanded by the very object for which civil courts have been established, which is to secure the peace and repose of society by the settlement of matters capable of judicial determination. Its enforcement is essential to the maintenance of social order; for, the aid of judicial tribunals would not be invoked for the vindication of rights of person and property, if, as between parties and their privies, conclusiveness did not attend the judgments of such tribunals in respect of all matters properly put in issue and actually determined by them.

Among the cases in this court that illustrate the general rule are Hopkins v. Lee, 6 Wheat. 109, 113; Smith v. Kernochen, 7 How. 198, 216; Thompson v. Roberts, 24 How. 233, 240; Washington, Alexandria && Georgetown Steam Packet Co. v. Sickles, 24 How. 333, 340, 341, 343; Russell v. Place, 94 U. S. 606, 608; Cromwell v. Sac County, 94 U. S. 351; Campbell v. Rankin, 99 U. S. 261; Lumber Co. v. Buchtel, 101 U. S. 638; Bissell v. Spring Valley Township, 124 U. S. 225, 230; and Johnson Co. v. Wharton, 152 U. S. 252.

In Hopkins v. Lee-which was a suit in equity by the purchaser of land to compel the vendor to remove certain incumbrances upon it-it was held that a fact established therein and made the basis of a decree could not be disputed in a subsequent action of covenant brought by the latter against the former for not conveying certain lands, part of the consideration, the court saying that the rule on that subject had found its way into every system of jurisprudence, not only from its obvious fitness and propriety, but because without it an end could not be put to litigation; in Smith v. Kernochen

which was ejectment by an assignee of a mortgage to recover possession of the mortgaged premises — that a final decree, in a previous suit, brought by the mortgagee against the mortgagor to foreclose the mortgage, adjudging the mortgage to be invalid for want of authority in the mortgagor to execute it, concluded the question of title, the court observing

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that the case came within the general rule that the judgment of a court of concurrent jurisdiction directly upon the point is as a plea a bar, or as evidence conclusive between the same parties or their privies upon the same matters when brought directly in question in another court; in Thompson v. Roberts, that the judgment of a court of law, or a decree of a court of equity, directly upon the same point, and between the same parties, is good as a plea in bar, and conclusive when given in evidence in a subsequent suit; in Washington, Alexandria & Georgetown Steam Packet Co. v. Sickles, that to the end that rights might be secured and the repose of society preserved, and that limits might be imposed upon the faculties for litigation, the presumption had been adopted that the thing adjudged by a court of competent jurisdiction, under definite conditions, shall be received in evidence "as irrefragable truth," such a presumption being a guarantee of the future efficiency and binding operation of the judgment; in Cromwell v. Sac County, that a judgment upon the merits constitutes an absolute bar to a subsequent suit upon the same cause of action in respect to every matter offered and received in evidence, or which might have been offered to sustain or defeat the claim in controversy, while if the second action is upon a different claim or demand, the judgment in the prior action operates as an estoppel only as to those matters in issue or points controverted upon the determination of which the finding or verdict was rendered, the injury in such case being "as to the point or question actually litigated and determined in the original action, not what might have been litigated and determined"; in Russell v. Place, that " a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, upon a question directly involved in one suit, is conclusive as to that question in another suit between the same parties"; in Campbell v. Rankin, that in an action to recover damages for trespass upon a mining claim, the record of a former suit between the same parties, involving the same question of interfering mining claims, was admissible as evidence, the court observing that "whenever the same question has been in issue and tried and judgment rendered, it is conclusive of the issue so decided in any subse

Opinion of the Court.

quent suit between the same parties"; in Lumber Co. v. Buchtel, that in a suit for the amount of the first instalment due on a contract for the purchase of timber lands—the defence being that the defendant had been induced to make the contract by false and fraudulent representations — a judgment based upon a finding that no such representations were made, was conclusive in respect of that matter in a subsequent action brought on the contract to recover a different instalment; in Bissell v. Spring Valley Township, that an adjudication, in an action on coupons of municipal bonds, sustaining the defence that the municipality never executed the bonds, and that the bonds were not its legal obligations, was conclusive in a subsequent action brought by the same party on different coupons of the same bonds; and in Johnson Co. v. Wharton, that in an action to recover stipulated royalties, for a named period, for guard rails constructed according to the specifications of a certain patent, in which judgment was given for the plaintiff, the defendant in a second suit brought to recover like royalties for a later period could not make the same defence, although, by reason of the small amount in dispute, he was precluded from having the judgment in the first suit reviewed upon writ of error, this court stating that it was a general rule, having its foundation in a wise public policy, that the final judgment of a court, at least one of superior jurisdiction, competent under the law of its creation to deal with the parties and the subject-matter, and having acquired jurisdiction of the parties, concludes those parties and their privies in respect of every matter put in issue by the pleadings and determined by such court. See also Lessee of Parrish v. Ferris, 2 Black, 606, 608; Packet Co. v. Sickles, 5 Wall. 580, 592; Dowell v. Applegate, 152 U. S. 327, 342.

The latest expressions of opinion by this court on this question are in Last Chance Mining Co. v. Tyler Mining Co., 157 U. S. 683, 691, and New Orleans v. Citizens' Bank, 167 U. S. 371, 396. In the first of these cases it was held that a judg ment by default in favor of the Last Chance Mining Company against the Tyler Mining Company for a parcel of land embraced within the boundaries of certain mining claims,

Opinion of the Court.

alleged to have been legally located and to belong to the former company, precluded the latter company from contending in a subsequent action for part of a mineral vein not embraced within the former suit, but within the mining claims involved in the first suit, that the mining claims in question had not been legally located the court observing that "a judgment by default was just as conclusive an adjudication between the parties of what is essential to support the judgment as one rendered after answer and contest," the essence of estoppel by judgment being that "there has been a judicial determination of a fact, and the question always is, has there been such determination, and not, upon what evidence or by what means was it reached?"

In New Orleans v. Citizens' Bank, it was held that the final and unreversed judgment of a court in Louisiana of superior jurisdiction upon the issue, duly raised by the pleadings, whether the bank was exempt by contract with the State from taxes assessed against it for particular years, concluded that question, as between the same parties and their representatives, in respect of taxes assessed against it for subsequent years. In that case the court said: "The estoppel resulting from the thing adjudged does not depend upon whether there is the same demand in both cases, but exists, even although there be different demands, when the question upon which the recovery of the second demand depends has under identical circumstances and conditions been previously concluded by a judgment between the parties or their privies."

In view of these adjudications, it would seem that the controlling inquiry is whether, under the pleadings in the former cases, the sufficiency of the Atlantic and Pacific maps of 1872 as maps of definite location, was a matter in issue and determined, as between the United States and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. That that matter was in issue and was actually decided in the former cases, is too clear to admit of doubt. That it was material is equally clear; for, upon its determination depended the question whether the grant of public lands to the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company attached to any specific lands along its line to which the for