Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 86.0

524US1

Unit: $U73

[09-06-00 17:32:49] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 38 (1998)

41

Opinion of the Court

continued to search for evidence of a land patent that sup-
In 1991 they hired a genealogical
ported their claim of title.
record specialist to conduct research in the National Ar-
chives in Washington. The specialist found materials that,
according to her, showed that on August 1, 1781, Bernardo
de Galvez, then the Governor General of Spanish Louisiana,
granted Horn Island to Catarina Boudreau.
If the land had
been granted to a private party prior to 1803, title presum-
ably could not have passed to the United States as a result
of the Louisiana Purchase. Respondents believed that the
Boudreau grant proved that their claim to the disputed land
was superior to that of the United States.

Armed with this new information, respondents ﬁled a com-
plaint in the District Court on June 1, 1994. They asked the
court to set aside the 1982 settlement agreement and award
them damages of “not less than $14,500 per acre” of the dis-
puted land. App. 26. The District Court concluded that it
was without jurisdiction to hear respondents’ suit and dis-
missed the complaint.

The Court of Appeals reversed.

It concluded that there
were two jurisdictional bases for the suit. First, the suit
satisﬁed the elements of an “independent action,” as the
term is used in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). Ac-
cording to the Court of Appeals, those elements are:

“(1) a judgment which ought not, in equity and good
conscience, to be enforced; (2) a good defense to the al-
leged cause of action on which the judgment is founded;
(3) fraud, accident, or mistake which prevented the de-
fendant in the judgment from obtaining the beneﬁt of
his defense; (4) the absence of fault or negligence on the
part of the defendant; and (5) the absence of any ade-
114 F. 3d 484, 487 (CA5 1997).
quate remedy at law.”

In its view, the settlement agreement could therefore be set
aside. Second, the Court of Appeals concluded that the QTA
conferred jurisdiction. The QTA includes a 12-year statute