Court Opinion

ID: 9653323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:44:03.417679+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:57.844851
License: Public Domain

George Bose Smith, J., dissenting. It does not seem to me that the appellee’s plea of res judicata has been established by a preponderance of the evidence. To sustain his burden of proof the appellee has merely shown that Mrs. Fleming took two steps that were in some way connected with the suit against her husband. First, she joined her husband in giving Cooper notice to vacate the premises. But Cooper voluntarily surrendered possession; so the notice accomplished its purpose and passed out of the picture. The subsequent suit was not brought by Fleming'as landlord, pursuant to the notice; on the contrary, it was brought by the tenant and involved an accounting rather than the issue of possession. Consequently it cannot fairly be inferred from the mere giving of the notice to vacate that Mrs. Fleming even knew of the suit later brought against her husband, much less that she controlled or participated in that suit. Second, it is shown that after the prior case had been completed in the trial court Mrs. Fleming telephoned the court reporter to inquire about the progress being made in preparing the record for appeal. This doubtless proves that Mrs. Fleming knew that a lawsuit between her husband and Cooper had been tried and was to be appealed, but again there is no basis for an inference that she either controlled the litigation or participated in it. Admittedly Mrs. Fleming was not a party to the former suit, nor was she in privity with her husband in the sense of having succeeded to his interest in the subject matter of the litigation. Hence she ought not to be bound by the prior decree in the absence of proof that she controlled that litigation or participated in it to such an extent as to raise an estoppel. Rest., Judgments, § 84; Hill v. Village Creek Dr. Dist., 215 Ark. 1, 219 S. W. 2d 635. In my opinion the appellee has not met the burden of making that proof. "When we lay aside Mrs. Fleming’s two inconsequential points of contact with the earlier suit, all that remains is the proof that her husband claimed ownership of the land in the first suit and that she now claims ownership in an effort to relitigate the same issues. In a similar situation, in which the wife asserted ownership after her husband had already lost a case that had been appealed to this court, we held that the wife’s complaint stated a cause of action. Dodson v. Abercrombie, 218 Ark. 50, 234 S. W. 2d 30. It seems to me that the Dodson case should control our decision in the case at bar.