Court Opinion

ID: 9532561
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:22:30.027862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:46.977397
License: Public Domain

SCHREIBER, J.,
concurring.
I agree substantially with Justice Pollock’s opinion. However, I am convinced that a civil monetary judgment is entitled to full faith and credit irrespective of its underlying basis.1 Thus in discussing the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Justice Stone wrote in Milwaukee County v. White Co., 296 U.S. 268, 275-276, 56 S.Ct. 229, 233, 80 L.Ed. 220, 227 (1935):
A cause of action on a judgment is different from that upon which the judgment was entered. In a suit upon a money judgment for a civil cause of action the validity of the claim upon which it was founded is not open to inquiry, whatever its genesis. Regardless of the nature of the right which gave rise to it, the judgment is an obligation to pay money in the nature of a debt upon a specialty. Recovery upon it can be resisted only on the grounds that the court which rendered it was without jurisdiction, ... or that it has ceased to be obligatory because of payment or other discharge; ... or that it is a cause of action for which the state of the forum has not provided a court, ... unless it is compelled to do so by the privileges and immunities clause; ... or possibly because procured by fraud.....
When the Court stated that it intimated “no opinion whether a suit upon a judgment for an obligation created by a penal law, *67in the international sense,” was entitled to full faith and credit, it was referring to a criminal, not a civil, judgment. Moreover, the rationale of the decision when considered with the purpose of the Clause strongly suggests that even a criminal monetary judgment is entitled to enforcement.
The majority’s statement that the Supreme Court continued in Nelson v. George, 399 U.S. 244, 90 S.Ct. 1963, 26 L.Ed.2d 578 (1970), to recognize the penal exception to the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not impact on the principle that one state must enforce the civil monetary judgments of a sister state. See Goodrich, Handbook of the Conflict of Laws (3d ed. 1949), § 213 at 624. Nelson v. George stands for the proposition that the Full Faith and Credit Clause may not be employed to enforce criminal orders of another state. In that case the petitioner, who was serving a sentence in California, sought to attack a detainer filed by North Carolina based on a North Carolina conviction. The Court held that the effect to be given to the North Carolina conviction as it related to petitioner’s custody in California depended on the state law of California and not on the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
Civil monetary judgments are entitled to the benefit of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Neither the validity of the claim nor the nature of the underlying obligation impair the full faith and credit due civil monetary judgments. Furthermore, there does not appear to be any justifiable basis for refusing to treat criminal monetary judgments in the same fashion.
SCHREIBER, J., concurring in the result.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices SULLIVAN, PASHMAN, CLIFFORD, SCHREIBER, HANDLER and POLLOCK — 7.
For reversal —None.

 Whether a criminal judgment for a monetary fine or penalty is entitled to full faith and credit is unsettled. See Goodrich, Handbook of the Confíict of Laws (3d ed. 1949), § 213 at 625 & n. 72 where the author compares Schuler v. Schuler, 209 Ill. 522, 71 N.E. 16 (1904), holding such a judgment is entitled to full faith and credit, with Arkansas v. Bowen, 3 App.D.C. 537 (1894), holding such a judgment is not entitled to full faith and credit.