Title: Brown v. Brown

State: louisiana

Issuer: Louisiana Supreme Court

Document:

387 So. 2d 565 (1980) Karen Townsend BROWN v. Donald R. BROWN. No. 66429. Supreme Court of Louisiana. May 19, 1980. Rehearing Denied September 19, 1980.[*] Kenneth Rigby, Love, Rigby, Dehan, Love & McDaniel, Shreveport, for plaintiff-applicant. Allen Howard Coon, Monroe, for defendant-respondent. ELLIS, Justice Ad Hoc. Plaintiff Karen Townsend Brown was divorced from her husband, Donald R. Brown, by judgment of the Chancery Court of Union County, Arkansas, on June 10, 1977. In that suit she prayed for and was granted the divorce, and custody of four minor children. Alimony was not prayed for and the judgment was silent on that point. This suit was filed in August, 1978, asking that the Arkansas judgment be given full faith and credit; that she be awarded custody of the children; and that she be awarded alimony and child support. Defendant did not contest his obligation to pay child support, but filed a peremptory exception of res judicata as to the demand for permanent alimony. The exception was sustained in the trial court, and that judgment affirmed in the Court of Appeal. Brown v. Brown, 377 So. 2d 438 (La.App. 2nd Cir. 1979). We granted certiorari to review the propriety of the judgment. The common law rule of res judicata is much broader than the civilian rule which applies in Louisiana. Arkansas applies the broader common law rule. In Miller v. Miller, 209 Ark. 505, 190 S.W.2d 991 (1945) the Arkansas Supreme Court said: See also Ellis v. Ellis, 220 Ark. 639, 249 S.W.2d 302 (1952); Taylor v. Taylor, 153 Ark. 206, 240 S.W. 6 (1922). We think it clear that plaintiff would be precluded from recovering alimony in Arkansas, since she neither asked for it in the Arkansas suit nor reserved her right to do so in the future. Plaintiff, however, claims that Louisiana is not bound to apply the Arkansas rule of res judicata in its own courts. It is, of course, settled that this State will give full faith and credit to divorce decrees of other states which are unassailable in those states. U.S. Constitution, Art. 4, Sec. 1; Boudreaux v. Welch, 249 La. 983, 192 So. 2d 356 (1966). In Golson v. Golson, 351 So. 2d 100 (La.1977), this Court said: We therefore hold that the Arkansas judgment is entitled to full faith and credit, and we must give it the same preclusive effect that it would have in Arkansas. Plaintiff is precluded by that judgment from obtaining permanent alimony. For the foregoing reasons, and for the reasons most capably expressed in the opinion of the Court of Appeal, the judgment is affirmed, at plaintiff's cost. Affirmed. CALOGERO, J., dissents and assigns reasons. WATSON, J., dissents. CALOGERO, Justice, dissenting. I am not certain that res judicata bars assertion of a Louisiana right to post-divorce alimony in this case where both spouses now live in Louisiana and where the alimony issue was not litigated in the Arkansas divorce proceeding. This case appears to fall within the issue left open in Yarborough v. Yarborough, 290 U.S. 202, 54 S. Ct. 181, 78 L. Ed. 269 (1933). In Yarborough, supra the Supreme Court held that South Carolina was required to give full faith and credit to a Georgia judgment terminating a father's obligation to support his daughter upon payment of a lump sum to a trustee for his daughter. The daughter in Yarborough was domiciled in South Carolina, but the father at the time of suit was still a resident of Georgia. The court noted however, that they did not decide whether South Carolina would have had the power to require the father if he were domiciled in South Carolina to make further provision for the support, maintenance, or education of his daughter. 290 U.S. at 213, 54 S. Ct. at 185. Justice Stone, dissenting in Yarborough, supra, stated that full faith and credit "does not command that the obligations attached to a status, because once appropriately imposed by one state, shall be forever placed beyond the control of every other state, without regard to the interest in it and the power of control which the other may later acquire." 290 U.S. at 219, 54 S. Ct. at 188. Justice Stone pointed out that it was universally accepted that a divorce decree which by its terms or by operation of law forbids remarriage could have no effect outside the state which rendered it. 290 U.S. at 217, 218, 54 S. Ct. at 187, 188. In this case we should determine whether Louisiana under the circumstances presented here has sufficient interest in the subject matter to award post-divorce alimony notwithstanding the Arkansas jurisprudential rule that "what might have been" pleaded is barred by res judicata. See Reese and Johnson, "The Scope of Full Faith and Credit to Judgments," 49 Col.L.R. 153 (1949). Because the majority takes a mechanistic approach to full faith and credit and does not squarely face this issue, I respectfully dissent. [*] Calogero, Watson and Lemmon, JJ., would grant a rehearing.