DANFORTH VS. DANFORTH (DIVORCE)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment sustaining a plea of res adjudicata founded on a judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Androscoggin County, Maine, denying the plaintiff's earlier divorce libel. Coleman, J., held: (1) whether tested by the common law (Blackstone: nonsuit requires the plaintiff's failure to appear) or by Rev. Laws 1912, sec. 5237 (the five statutory grounds for dismissal or nonsuit; in every other case judgment is on the merits, per Burns v. Rodefer, 15 Nev. 63), the Maine judgment reciting that the material facts were not sufficiently proved and denying the libel was a judgment on the merits, not a nonsuit; (2) want of an answer in the Maine proceeding is immaterial in divorce, which is 'triangular' and never concluded as against the court; (3) divorce is a proceeding not according to the course of the common law (matrimonial causes having been ecclesiastical), so the presumption of regularity attending judgments of courts of general jurisdiction does not supply the jurisdictional facts; (4) under Rev. Laws sec. 5070 the jurisdictional facts of a sister-state judgment of this character need not be pleaded, but must be proved where the reply denies rendition of the judgment, except facts the reply admits (here, only the Maine court's general divorce jurisdiction was admitted). Admitting the certified copy without proof of the jurisdictional facts was reversible error. Reversed and remanded for a new trial.

In plain language

A spouse sued for divorce in Nevada. The defending spouse answered that a court in Maine had already decided the same divorce claim against the plaintiff (a defense called res judicata - the matter has already been judged). At trial, over the plaintiff's objection, the Nevada court admitted a certified copy of the Maine judgment, which recited that 'the material facts alleged in the libel suit' were 'not sufficiently proved to the satisfaction of the court' and that the libel was denied. The Nevada court then ruled the Maine judgment barred the new suit. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed. It first held the Maine judgment was a decision on the merits, not a mere 'nonsuit' (an abandonment that would allow refiling): both at common law and under Nevada's nonsuit statute, the Maine plaintiff had not abandoned the case, so the denial of the libel counted as a merits ruling. But the court then held the Nevada trial court committed reversible error in ADMITTING the Maine judgment, because divorce is not a proceeding 'according to the course of the common law,' so the usual presumption that a court of general jurisdiction acted with full jurisdiction does not apply. Since the plaintiff's reply denied that the Maine judgment had been rendered, the defendant had to prove the Maine court's jurisdictional facts before the judgment could come into evidence, and did not. The case was sent back for a new trial.