Seevers v. Clement

Alvey, J., delivered the opinion of this Court. By admission and agreement of parties, the oidy question raised, to be decided on this appeal, is as to the effect of the pendency of the suit in the Court of Pennsylvania, at the time of the institution of this cause in the Court below, both proceedings being between the same parties, and on the same cause of action. The specific question is, whether the defendant can effectually plead the pendency of the prior suit in a foreign jurisdiction, either in abatement or in bar of this action. We say foreign jurisdiction, because, while it is settled that for all national purposes embraced by the Federal ⁴³⁴ Constitution, the States and the citizens thereof, constitute one government, united under the same sovereign authority, and governed by the same laws, yet, in all other respects, and for all other purposes, the several States retain their individual sovereignties, and with respect to their municipal regulations, are to each other foreign.

That such is the relation of the States to each other, has been expressly determined in the case of Buckner vs. Finley and Van Lear, 2 Pet., 586 . Indeed, such is the decision in numerous cases in both Federal and State Courts. So that, in legal contemplation, the jurisdiction of the Courts of Pennsylvania is foreign to the jurisdiction of those of Maryland, and this ease is therefore not distinguishable from that of the ordinary case of an action pending in a wholly foreign jurisdiction, and which is sought to be made the matter of plea, to abate or defeat a suit brought in our own Courts, between the same parties, and for the same cause. The question of the validity of such a plea has frequently occured in other American Courts, but it has remained to the present, so far as wé can learn, an undecided question by the Court of Appeals of this State; for what was said in regard to it by the Court in deciding the case of The Bank of the United States vs. The Merchants’ Bank of Baltimore, in 7 Gill, 429 , was only by way of illustration of an argument, to maintain a proposition altogether different in its character from the question now presented, and is therefore not to be regarded as authority.

At the common law the rule is well established, that the pendency of a prior suit, in personam, in a foreign Court, between the same parties, for the same cause of action, is no sufficient cause for stay or bar of a suit instituted in one of our own Courts. It is only the definitive judgment on the merits that will be considered conclusive; and this rule has been frequently declared to obtain in all its force, both by Federal and State Courts, in regard to actions pending in another State of the Union; and we think upon good and sufficient reason. In the case of White vs. Whitman, 1 Curtis’ ⁴³⁵ U. S. C. C. Rep., 494, the defendant pleaded in abatement of the action, the pendency of a prior suit in a State Court, and Judge Curtis, then of the Supreme Court of the United States, in