Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 92

524US1

Unit: $U73

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

47

Opinion of the Court

Such a case was Marshall v. Holmes, 141 U. S. 589 (1891),
in which the plaintiff alleged that judgment had been taken
against her in the underlying action as a result of a forged
document. The Court said:

“According to the averments of the original petition for
injunction . . . the judgments in question would not have
been rendered against Mrs. Marshall but for the use in
evidence of the letter alleged to be forged. The case
evidently intended to be presented by the petition is one
where, without negligence, laches or other fault upon
the part of petitioner, [respondent] has fraudulently ob-
tained judgments which he seeks, against conscience, to
enforce by execution.”

Id., at 596.

The sense of these expressions is that, under the Rule, an
independent action should be available only to prevent a
In this case, it should be obvi-
grave miscarriage of justice.
ous that respondents’ allegations do not nearly approach this
demanding standard. Respondents allege only that the
United States failed to “thoroughly search its records and
make full disclosure to the Court” regarding the Boudreau
grant. App. 23. Whether such a claim might succeed
under Rule 60(b)(3), we need not now decide; it surely would
work no “grave miscarriage of justice,” and perhaps no mis-
carriage of justice at all, to allow the judgment to stand.
We therefore hold that the Court of Appeals erred in con-
cluding that this was a sufﬁcient basis to justify the reopen-
ing of the judgment in the Adams litigation.4

The Court of Appeals did not, however, merely reopen the
Adams litigation.
It also directed the District Court to
quiet title to the property in respondents’ favor. The Court
of Appeals believed that the QTA, 28 U. S. C. § 2409a, pro-
vided jurisdiction to do this. The QTA permits “plaintiffs

4 We therefore need not address the additional requirement that evi-
dence of the Boudreau grant would have changed the outcome of the origi-
nal action. See, e. g., Pickford v. Talbott, 225 U. S. 651, 657 (1912).