Court Opinion

ID: 9643588
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:33:34.627811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:01.684785
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I fear wé are here invoking a bit of ritualism to force unnecessary ambiguity into our judgments, contrary to the precedents and the practicalities of the situation. The unquestioned law is that on the facts here assumed (and proved, in my opinion) the judgment herein is forever binding both for and 'against the Perfex Companies who actually conducted the defense. See cases collected in S. S. Kresge Co. v. Winget Kickernick Co., 8 Cir., 96 F.2d 978, 989; Doherty Research Co. v. Universal Oil Products Co., 7 Cir., 107 F.2d 548.1 Unless the judgment, however, contains a statement of this fact, its extent will always be uncertain until proof thereof is ultimately made in each new action as brought. In other words,, further' litigation — in form unadjudicated, in actual fact barred — is stimulated. • The time to settle this issue is before all this occurs and when the evidence is most at hand, namely, when the original judgment is entered. Actually if the judgment is then made to tell what its real effect is, there will be few, if any, later attacks upon it in the guise of suits against apparent new parties. Theoretically it may still be possible for the privy later to assert that he was not so in fact, but was adjudged so in a suit in which he did not participate; but —lacking actual fraud, which upsets any judgment — such a claim will be rare, because baseless against the facts already made available by the former action.
Why should we not require the privy to be made a formal party, thus avoiding even the remote contingency just mentioned? For the most practical of reasons, to wit, the limitations of federal jurisdiction and venue, as many cases point out, e. g., Freeman-Sweet Co. v. Luminous Unit Co., 7 Cir., 264 F. 107, Mack, J., certiorari denied 253 U.S. 486, 40 S.Ct. 482, 64 L.Ed. 1025; Van Kannel Revolving Door Co. v. Winton Hotel Co., D.C.N.D.Ohio, 263 F. 988, 994; G. & C. Merriam Co. v. Saalfield, 241 U.S. 22, 29, 36 S.Ct. 477, 60 L.Ed. 868; and cf. S. S. Kresge Co. v. Winget Kickernick Co., supra. True, the privy may perchance waive venue (Gulf Smokeless Coal Co. v. Sutton, Steele & Steele, 4 Cir., 35 F.2d 433, 438) ; then a requirement of joinder would operate quite unfairly as a restriction against the privy’s opponent alone. Joinder does not affect the binding force of the judgment here; nor should it affect the question of making; the judgment a truth-telling one.
The contrary suggestion is- based on the conclusion that defendant Thermoco has no interest in this, relief. I do not see how that can be so; as a matter of practical business, it is vitally concerned in the question whether or not its goods are subject to patent attack, before or after it takes them; as a matter'of law, it is the agent of the manufacturer in this litigation and bound to safeguard the latter’s interests. But further, that does not in any way answer our present question, which is simply whether the judgment shall state the facts, shall, as' Shiras, J., so well puts it, state only “in set phrase, the force which the decree would in fact have as against the corporation.” Eagle Mfg. Co. v. Miller, C.C.S.D.Iowa, 41 F. 351, 358. This confusion between what the parties must plead and prove and what the judgment should say if it is to be accurate and complete must be the explana*849tion for the difference in the way my brothers and I read the analogous precedents. They seem to me clear and precise, incapable of being explained away. Thus, the Sixth Circuit in N. O. Nelson Mfg. Co. v. F. E. Myers & Bro. Co., 25 F.2d 659, 666, in affirming the precise form of a decree entered below and stating the difference between a record of the fact and an inter-party finding, merely adverted to the distinction I have noted above between the situations where a privy is or is not joined as a formal party. And Thacher, J.’s careful discrimination between formal joinder and recital of actualities in Radio Corp. of America v. E. J. Edmond & Co., D.C.S.D.N.Y., 20 F.2d 929, 932, seems to me far indeed from unconsidered. See also Eagle Mfg. Co. v. Miller, supra; Bidwell v. Toledo Consolidated St. Ry. Co., C.C.N.D.Ohio, 72 F. 10, 13; Battey v. Paris Beauty Parlors Supply Co., D.C.N.D.Calif., 4 F.Supp. 531, 535; Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. International Harvester Co., D.C.N.J., 32 F.Supp. 304, 306; and the decision below, D.C.E.D.N.Y., 34 F.Supp. 403. I cannot discover even a dictum to support the contrary view.
I wish I might grasp the procedural obstacles here found insurmountable; to me they are wholly elusive. But whatever they are, they lead to concealment of the real decision, and are thus provocative of future fruitless litigation.

 Phœnix Finance Corp. v. Iowa-Wisconsin Bridge Co., 8 Cir., 115 F.2d 1, 6, points out that the judgment may be the basis of further affirmative relief against the non-joined privy. That the privy’s opponent may take advantage of the rule even though the defense has not been open, see Clark, J., in Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. International Harvester Co., D.C.N.J., 32 F.Supp. 304; 39 Col.L.Rev. 1251.