The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation Part 124

EFFECT TO BE GIVEN IN FORUM STATE

The English courts and the different State courts in the United States, while recognizing "foreign judgments _in personam_" which were reducible to money terms as affording a basis for actions in debt, originally accorded them generally only the status of _prima facie_ evidence in support thereof, so that the merits of the original controversy could always be opened. When offered in defense, on the other hand, "foreign judgments _in personam_" were ordinarily treated as conclusive, as between parties, of the issues they purported to determine, provided they had been rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction and were not tainted with fraud. And judgments "_in rem_" rendered under the same conditions were regarded as conclusive upon everybody on the theory that, as stated by Chief Justice Marshall, "it is a proceeding _in rem_, to which all the world are parties."[3]

The pioneer case was Mills _v._ Duryee,[4] decided in 1813. In an action brought in the circuit court of the District of Columbia--the equivalent of a State court for this purpose--on a judgment from a New York court, the defendant endeavored to reopen the whole question of the merits of the original case by a plea of "_nil debet_." It was answered in the words of the act of 1790 itself, that such records and proceedings were ent.i.tled in each State to the same faith and credit as in the State of origin; and that inasmuch as they were records of a court in the State of origin, and so conclusive of the merits of the case there, they were equally so in the forum State. The Court adopted the latter view, saying that it had not been the intention of the Const.i.tution merely to reenact the common law--that is, the principles of private international law--as to the reception of foreign judgments, but to amplify and fortify these.[5] And in Hampton _v._ McConnell[6] some years later, Chief Justice Marshall went even further, using language which seems to show that he regarded the judgment of a State court as const.i.tutionally ent.i.tled to be accorded in the courts of sister States not simply the faith and credit of conclusive evidence, but the validity of a final judgment.

When, however, the next important case arose, the Court has come under new influences. This was McElmoyle _v._ Cohen,[7] decided in 1839, in which the issue was whether a statute of limitations of the State of Georgia, which applied only to judgments obtained in courts other than those of Georgia, could const.i.tutionally bar an action in Georgia on a judgment rendered by a court of record of South Carolina. Declining to follow Marshall's lead in Hampton _v._ McConnell, the Court held that the Const.i.tution was not intended "materially to interfere with the essential attributes of the _lex fori_"; that the act of Congress only established a rule of evidence, of conclusive evidence to be sure, but still of evidence only; and that it was necessary, in order to carry into effect in a State the judgment of a court of a sister State, to inst.i.tute a fresh action in the court of the former, in strict compliance with its laws; and that consequently, when remedies were sought in support of the rights accruing in another jurisdiction, they were governed by the _lex fori_. In accord with this holding it has been further held that foreign judgments enjoy, not the right of priority or privilege or lien which they have in the State where they are p.r.o.nounced, but only that which the _lex fori_ gives them by its own laws, in their character of foreign judgments.[8] A judgment of a State court, in a cause within its jurisdiction, and against a defendant lawfully summoned, or against lawfully attached property of an absent defendant, is ent.i.tled to as much force and effect against the person summoned or the property attached, when the question is presented for decision in a court in another State, as it has in the State in which it was rendered.[9]

A judgment enforceable in the State where rendered must be given effect in the other State, although the modes of procedure to enforce its collection may not be the same in both States.[10] If the court has acquired jurisdiction, the judgment is ent.i.tled to full faith and credit though the court may not be able to enforce it by execution in the State in which it was rendered, as where the defendant left the State after service upon him and took all his property with him. While the want of power to enforce a judgment or decree may afford a reason against entertaining jurisdiction, it has nothing to do with the validity of a judgment or decree when made.[11] In the words of the Court in a recent case: "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 * * *"[12]

On the other hand, the clause is not violated when a judgment is disregarded because it is not conclusive of the issues before a court of the forum. Conversely, no greater effect can be given than is given in the State where rendered. Thus an interlocutory judgment may not be given the effect of a final judgment.[13] Likewise when a federal court does not attempt to foreclose the State court from hearing all matters of personal defense which landowners might plead, a State court may refuse to accept the former's judgment as determinative of the landowners' liabilities.[14] Similarly, though a confession of judgment upon a note, with a warrant of attorney annexed, in favor of the holder, is in conformity with a State law and usage as declared by the highest court of the State in which the judgment is rendered, the judgment may be collaterally impeached upon the ground that the party in whose behalf it was rendered was not in fact the holder.[15] But a consent decree, which under the law of the State has the same force and effect as a decree _in invitum_, must be given the same effect in the courts of another State.[16]

One result produced by not following Hampton _v._ McConnell is that even nowadays the Court is sometimes confronted with the contention that a State need not provide a forum for some particular type of judgment from a sister State, a claim which it has by no means met with clear-cut principles. Thus in one case it held that a New York statute forbidding foreign corporations doing a domestic business to sue on causes originating outside the State was const.i.tutionally applicable to prevent such a corporation from suing on a judgment obtained in a sister State.[17] But in a later case it ruled that a Mississippi statute forbidding contracts in cotton futures could not validly close the courts of the State to an action on a judgment obtained in a sister State on such a contract, although the contract in question had been entered into in the forum State and between its citizens.[18] Following the later rather than the earlier precedent, subsequent cases[19] have held: (1) that a State may adopt such system of courts and form of remedy as it sees fit, but cannot, under the guise of merely affecting the remedy, deny enforcement of claims otherwise within the protection of the full faith and credit clause when its courts have general jurisdiction of the subject matter and the parties;[20] (2) that, accordingly, a forum State, which has a shorter period of limitations than the State in which a judgment was granted and later reviewed, erred in concluding that, whatever the effect of the revivor under the law of the State of origin, it could refuse enforcement of the revived judgment;[21] (3) that the courts of one State have no jurisdiction to enjoin the enforcement of judgments at law obtained in another State, when the same reasons a.s.signed for granting the restraining order were pa.s.sed upon on a motion for new trial in the action at law and the motion denied;[22] (4) that the const.i.tutional mandate requires credit to be given to a money judgment rendered in a civil cause of action in another State, even though the forum State would have been under no duty to entertain the suit on which the judgment was founded, inasmuch as a State cannot, by the adoption of a particular rule of liability or of procedure, exclude from its courts a suit on a judgment;[23] and (5) that similarly, tort claimants in State A, who obtain a judgment against a foreign insurance company, notwithstanding that, prior to judgment, domiciliary State B appointed a liquidator for the company, vested company a.s.sets in him, and ordered suits against the company stayed, are ent.i.tled to have such judgment recognized in State B for purposes of determining the amount of their claim, although not for determination of what priority, if any, their claim should have.[24] Moreover, there is no apparent reason why Congress, acting on the implications of Marshall's words in Hampton _v._ McConnell, should not clothe extrastate judgments of any particular type with the full status of domestic judgments of the same type in the several States.[25]

The Jurisdictional Prerequisite

The second great cla.s.s of cases to arise under the full faith and credit clause comprises those raising the question whether a judgment for which extrastate operation was being sought, either as a basis of an action or as a defense in one, has been rendered with jurisdiction. Records and proceedings of courts wanting jurisdiction are not ent.i.tled to credit.[26] The jurisdictional question arises both in connection with judgments _in personam_ against nonresident defendants upon whom it is alleged personal service was not obtained in the State of origin of the judgment, and in relation to judgments _in rem_ against property or a status alleged not to have been within the jurisdiction of the Court which handed down the original decree.[27]

JUDGMENTS _IN PERSONAM_

The pioneer case is that of D'Arcy _v._ Ketchum,[28] decided in 1850.

The question presented was whether a judgment rendered by a New York court under a statute which provided that, when joint debtors were sued and one of them was brought into court on a process, a judgment in favor of the plaintiff would ent.i.tle him to execute against all, and so must be accorded full faith and credit in Louisiana when offered as the basis of an action in debt against a resident of that State who had not been served by process in the New York action. Pressed with the argument that by "the immutable principles of justice" no man's rights should be impaired without his being given an opportunity to defend them, the Court ruled that, interpreted in the light of the principles of "international law and comity" as they existed in 1790, the act of Congress of that year did not reach the case.[29] The truth is that the decision virtually amended the act, for had the Louisiana defendant ventured to New York, he could, as the Const.i.tution of the United States then stood, have been subjected to the judgment of the same extent as the New York defendant who had been personally served. Subsequently, this disparity between the operation of a personal judgment in the home State and a sister State has been eliminated, thanks to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. In divorce cases, however, it still persists in some measure. (_See_ pp. 662-670.)

In Pennoyer _v._ Neff,[30] decided in 1878, and so under the amendment, the Court held that a judgment given in a case in which the State court had endeavored to acquire jurisdiction of a nonresident defendant by an attachment upon property of his within the State and constructive notice to him, had not been rendered with jurisdiction and hence could not afford the basis of an action in the court of another State against such defendant, although it bound him so far as the property attached was concerned, on account of the inherent right of a State to a.s.sist its own citizens in obtaining satisfaction of their just claims. Nor would such a judgment, the Court further indicated, be due process of law to any greater extent in the State where rendered. In the words of a later case, "an ordinary personal judgment for money, invalid for want of service amounting to due process of law, is as ineffective in the State as outside of it."[31]

THE JURISDICTIONAL QUESTION

In short, when the subject matter of a suit is merely the determination of the defendant's liability, it is necessary that it should appear from the record that the defendant had been brought within the jurisdiction of the court by personal service of process, or his voluntary appearance, or that he had in some manner authorized the proceeding.[32]

The claim that a judgment was "not responsive to the pleadings" raises the jurisdictional question;[33] but the fact that a nonresident defendant was only temporarily in the State when he was served in the original action does not vitiate the judgment rendered as the basis of an action in his home State.[34] Also, a judgment rendered in the State of his domicile against a defendant who, pursuant to the statute thereof providing for the service of process on absent defendants, was personally served in another State is ent.i.tled to full faith and credit.[35] Also, when the matter of fact or law on which jurisdiction depends was not litigated in the original suit, it is a matter to be adjudicated in the suit founded upon the judgment.[36]

Inasmuch as the principle of _res judicata_ applies only to proceedings between the same parties and privies, the plea by defendant in an action based on a judgment that he was no party or privy to the original action raises the question of jurisdiction; and while a judgment against a corporation in one State may validly bind a stockholder in another State to the extent of the par value of his holdings,[37] an administrator acting under a grant of administration in one State stands in no sort of relation of priority to an administrator of the same estate in another State.[38] But where a judgment of dismissal was entered in a federal court in an action against one of two joint tortfeasors, in a State in which such a judgment would const.i.tute an estoppel in another action in the same State against the other tort-feasor, such judgment is not ent.i.tled to full faith and credit in an action brought against the other tortfeasor in another State.[39]

SERVICE ON FOREIGN CORPORATIONS

In 1856 the Court decided Lafayette Insurance Co. _v._ French et al.,[40] a pioneer case in its general cla.s.s. Here it was held that "where a corporation chartered by the State of Indiana was allowed by a law of Ohio to transact business in the latter State upon the condition that service of process upon the agent of the corporation should be considered as service upon the corporation itself, a judgment obtained against the corporation by means of such process" ought to receive in Indiana the same faith and credit as it was ent.i.tled to in Ohio.[41]

Later cases establish under both the Fourteenth Amendment and article IV, section 1, that the cause of action must have arisen within the State obtaining service in this way,[42] that service on an officer of a corporation, not its resident agent and not present in the State in an official capacity, will not confer jurisdiction over the corporation;[43] that the question whether the corporation was actually "doing business" in the State may be raised.[44] On the other hand, the fact that the business was interstate is no objection.[45]

SERVICE ON OUT-OF-STATE OWNERS OF MOTOR VEHICLES

By a.n.a.logy to the above cases, it has been held that a State may require nonresident owners of motor vehicles to designate an official within the State as an agent upon whom process may be served in any legal proceedings growing out of their operation of a motor vehicle within the State;[46] and while these cases arose under the Fourteenth Amendment alone, unquestionably a judgment validly obtained upon this species of service could be enforced upon the owner of a car through the courts of his home State.

JUDGMENTS _IN REM_

In sustaining the challenge to jurisdiction in cases involving judgments _in personam_, the Court was in the main making only a somewhat more extended application of recognized principles. In order to sustain the same kind of challenge in cases involving judgments _in rem_ it has had to make law outright. The leading case is Thompson _v._ Whitman,[47]

decided in 1874. Thompson, sheriff of Monmouth County, New Jersey, acting under a New Jersey statute, had seized a sloop belonging to Whitman, and by a proceeding _in rem_ had obtained its condemnation and forfeiture in a local court. Later, Whitman, a citizen of New York, brought an action for trespa.s.s against Thompson in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, and Thompson answered by producing a record of the proceedings before the New Jersey tribunal. Whitman thereupon set up the contention that the New Jersey court had acted without jurisdiction inasmuch as the sloop which was the subject matter of the proceedings had been seized outside the county to which, by the statute under which it had acted, its jurisdiction was confined.

Thompson _v._ Whitman

As previously explained, the plea of lack of privity cannot be set up in defense in a sister State against a judgment _in rem_. It is, on the other hand, required of a proceeding _in rem_ that the _res_ be within the court's jurisdiction, and this, it was urged, had not been the case in Thompson _v._ Whitman. Could, then, the Court consider this challenge with respect to a judgment which was offered not as the basis for an action for enforcement through the courts of a sister State, but merely as a defense in a collateral action? As the law stood in 1873, it apparently could not.[48] All difficulties, nevertheless, to its consideration of the challenge to jurisdiction in the case were brushed aside by the Court. Whenever, it said, the record of a judgment rendered in a State court is offered "in evidence" by either of the parties to an action in another State, it may be contradicted as to the facts necessary to sustain the former court's jurisdiction; "and if it be shown that such facts did not exist, the record will be a nullity, notwithstanding the claim that they did exist."[49]

Divorce Decrees

THE JURISDICTIONAL PREREQUISITE: DOMICILE

This however, was only the beginning of the court's lawmaking in cases _in rem_. The most important cla.s.s of such cases is that in which the respondent to a suit for divorce offers in defense an earlier decree from the courts of a sister State. By the almost universally accepted view prior to 1906 a proceeding in divorce was one against the marriage status, i.e., _in rem_, and hence might be validly brought by either party in any State where he or she was _bona fide_ domiciled;[50] and, conversely, when the plaintiff did not have a _bona fide_ domicile in the State, a court could not render a decree binding in other States even if the nonresident defendant entered a personal appearance.[51] But in 1906 the Court discovered, by a vote of five-to-four, a situation in which a divorce proceeding is one _in personam_.

Haddock _v._ Haddock

The case referred to is Haddock _v._ Haddock,[52] while the earlier rule is ill.u.s.trated by Atherton _v._ Atherton,[53] decided five years previously. In the latter it was held, in the former denied, that a divorce granted a husband without personal service upon the wife, who at the time was residing in another State, was ent.i.tled to recognition under the full faith and credit clause and the acts of Congress; the difference between the cases consisting solely in the fact that in the Atherton case the husband had driven the wife from their joint home by his conduct, while in the Haddock case he had deserted her. The Court which granted the divorce in Atherton _v._ Atherton was held to have had jurisdiction of the marriage status, with the result that the proceeding was one _in rem_ and hence required only service by publication upon the respondent. Haddock's suit, on the contrary, was held to be as to the wife _in personam_, and so to require personal service upon her, or her voluntary appearance, neither of which had been had; although, notwithstanding this, the decree in the latter case was held to be valid as to the State where obtained on account of the State's inherent power to determine the status of its own citizens. The upshot was a situation in which a man and a woman, when both were in Connecticut, were divorced; when both were in New York, were married; and when the one was in Connecticut and the other in New York, the former was divorced and the latter married. In Atherton _v._ Atherton the Court had earlier acknowledged that "a husband without a wife, or a wife without a husband, is unknown to the law."

EMERGENCE OF THE DOMICILE QUESTION

The practical difficulties and distresses likely to result from such anomalies were pointed out by critics of the decision at the time. In point of fact, they have been largely avoided, because most of the State courts have continued to give judicial recognition and full faith and credit to one another's divorce proceedings on the basis of the older idea that a divorce proceeding is one _in rem_, and that if the applicant is _bona fide_ domiciled in the State the court has jurisdiction in this respect. Moreover, until the second of the Williams _v._ North Carolina cases[54] was decided in 1945, there had not been manifested the slightest disposition to challenge judicially the power of the States to determine what shall const.i.tute domicile for divorce purposes. Shortly prior thereto, in 1938, the Court in Davis _v._ Davis[55] rejected contentions adverse to the validity of a Virginia decree of which enforcement was sought in the District of Columbia. In this case, a husband, after having obtained in the District a decree of separation subject to payment of alimony, established years later a residence in Virginia, and sued there for a divorce. Personally served in the District, where she continued to reside, the wife filed a plea denying that her husband was a resident of Virginia and averred that he was guilty of a fraud on the court in seeking to establish a residence for purposes of jurisdiction. In ruling that the Virginia decree, granting to the husband an absolute divorce minus any alimony payment, was enforceable in the District, the Court stated that in view of the wife's failure, while in Virginia litigating her husband's status to sue, to answer the husband's charges of wilful desertion, it would be unreasonable to hold that the husband's domicile in Virginia was not sufficient to ent.i.tle him to a divorce effective in the District. The finding of the Virginia court on domicile and jurisdiction was declared to bind the wife. Davis _v._ Davis is distinguishable from the Williams _v._ North Carolina decisions in that in the former, determination of the jurisdictional prerequisite of domicile was made in a contested proceeding, while in the Williams cases it was not.

Williams I and II

In the Williams I and Williams II cases, the husband of one marriage and the wife of another left North Carolina, obtained six-week divorce decrees in Nevada, married there, and resumed their residence in North Carolina where both previously had been married and domiciled.

Prosecuted for bigamy, the defendants relied upon their Nevada decrees; and won the preliminary round of this litigation; that is, Williams I,[56] when a majority of the justices, overruling Haddock _v._ Haddock, declared that in this case, the Court must a.s.sume that the pet.i.tioners for divorce had a _bona fide_ domicile in Nevada, and not that their Nevada domicile was a sham. "* * * each State, by virtue of its command over its domiciliaries and its large interest in the inst.i.tution of marriage, can alter within its own borders the marriage status of the spouse domiciled there, even though the other spouse is absent. There is no const.i.tutional barrier if the form and nature of subst.i.tuted service meet the requirements of due process." Accordingly, a decree granted by Nevada to one, who, it is a.s.sumed, is at the time _bona fide_ domiciled therein, is binding upon the courts of other States, including North Carolina in which the marriage was performed and where the other party to the marriage is still domiciled when the divorce was decreed. In view of its a.s.sumptions, which it justified on the basis of an inadequate record, the Court did not here pa.s.s upon the question whether North Carolina had the power to refuse full faith and credit to a Nevada decree because it was based on residence rather than domicile; or because, contrary to the findings of the Nevada court, North Carolina found that no _bona fide_ domicile had been acquired in Nevada.[57]

Presaging what ruling the Court would make when it did get around to pa.s.sing upon the latter question, Justice Jackson, dissenting in Williams I, protested that "this decision repeals the divorce laws of all the States and subst.i.tutes the law of Nevada as to all marriages one of the parties to which can afford a short trip there. * * * While a State can no doubt set up its own standards of domicile as to its internal concerns, I do not think it can require us to accept and in the name of the Const.i.tution impose them on other States. * * * The effect of the Court's decision today--that we must give extraterritorial effect to any judgment that a state honors for its own purposes--is to deprive this Court of control over the operation of the full faith and credit and the due process clauses of the Federal Const.i.tution in cases of contested jurisdiction and to vest it in the first State to pa.s.s on the facts necessary to jurisdiction."[58]

Notwithstanding that one of the deserted spouses had died since the initial trial and that another had remarried, North Carolina, without calling into question the status of the latter marriage began a new prosecution for bigamy; and when the defendants appealed the conviction resulting therefrom, the Supreme Court, in Williams II,[59] sustained the adjudication of guilt as not denying full faith and credit to the Nevada divorce decree. Reiterating the doctrine that jurisdiction to grant divorce is founded on domicile,[60] a majority of the Court held that a decree of divorce rendered in one State may be collaterally impeached in another by proof that the court which rendered the decree lacked jurisdiction (the parties not having been domiciled therein), even though the record of proceedings in that court purports to show jurisdiction.[61]

CASES INVOLVING CLAIMS FOR ALIMONY OR PROPERTY ARISING IN FORUM STATE

In Esenwein _v._ Commonwealth,[62] decided on the same day as the second Williams Case, the Supreme Court also sustained a Pennsylvania court in its refusal to recognize an _ex parte_ Nevada decree on the ground that the husband who obtained it never acquired a _bona fide_ domicile in the latter State. In this instance, the husband and wife had separated in Pennsylvania, where the wife was granted a support order; and after two unsuccessful attempts to win a divorce in that State, the husband departed for Nevada. Upon the receipt of a Nevada decree, the husband thereafter established a residence in Ohio, and filed an action in Pennsylvania for total relief from the support order. In a concurring opinion, in which he was joined by Justices Black and Rutledge, Justice Douglas stressed the "basic difference between the problem of marital capacity and the problem of support," and stated that it was "not apparent that the spouse who obtained the decree can defeat an action for maintenance or support in another State by showing that he was domiciled in the State which awarded him the divorce decree," unless the other spouse appeared or was personally served. "The State where the deserted wife is domiciled has a deep concern in the welfare of the family deserted by the head of the household. If he is required to support his former wife, he is not made a bigamist and the offspring of his second marriage are not b.a.s.t.a.r.dized." Or as succinctly stated by Justice Rutledge, "the jurisdictional foundation for a decree in one State capable of foreclosing an action for maintenance or support in another may be different from that required to alter the marital status with extraterritorial effect."[63]

Three years later, but on this occasion as spokesman for a majority of the Court, Justice Douglas reiterated these views in the case of Estin _v._ Estin.[64] Even though it acknowledged the validity of an _ex parte_ Nevada decree obtained by a husband, New York was held not to have denied full faith and credit to said decree when, subsequently thereto, it granted the wife a judgment for arrears in alimony founded upon a decree of separation previously awarded to her when both she and her husband were domiciled in New York. The Nevada decree, issued to the husband after he had resided there a year and upon constructive notice to the wife in New York who entered no appearance, was held to be effective only to change the marital status of both parties in all States of the Union but ineffective on the issue of alimony. Divorce, in other words, was viewed as being divisible; and Nevada, in the absence of acquiring jurisdiction over the wife, was held incapable of adjudicating the rights of the wife in the prior New York judgment awarding her alimony. Accordingly, the Nevada decree could not prevent New York from applying its own rule of law which, unlike that of Pennsylvania,[65] does permit a support order to survive a divorce decree.[66] Such a result was justified as accommodating the interests of both New York and Nevada in the broken marriage by restricting each State to matters of her dominant concern, the concern of New York being that of protecting the abandoned wife against impoverishment.

RECENT CASES

Fears registered by the dissenters in the second Williams Case that the stability of all divorces might be undermined thereby and that thereafter the court of each forum State, by its own independent determination of domicile, might refuse recognition of foreign decrees were temporarily set at rest by the holding in Sherrer _v._ Sherrer,[67]

wherein Ma.s.sachusetts, a state of domiciliary origin, was required to accord full faith and credit to a 90-day Florida decree which had been contested by the husband. The latter, upon receiving notice by mail, retained Florida counsel who entered a general appearance and denied all allegations in the complaint, including the wife's residence. At the hearing the husband, though present in person and by counsel, did not offer evidence in reb.u.t.tal of the wife's proof of her Florida residence; and when the Florida court ruled that she was a _bona fide_ resident, the husband did not appeal. Inasmuch as the findings of the requisite jurisdictional facts, unlike those in the Second Williams Case, were made in proceedings in which the defendant appeared and partic.i.p.ated, the requirements of full faith and credit were held to bar him from collaterally attacking such findings in a suit inst.i.tuted by him in his home State of Ma.s.sachusetts, particularly in the absence of proof that the divorce decree was subject to such collateral attack in a Florida court. Having failed to take advantage of the opportunities afforded him by his appearance in the Florida proceeding, the husband was thereafter precluded from re-litigating in another State the issue of his wife's domicile already pa.s.sed upon by the Florida court.

In Coe _v._ Coe,[68] embracing a similar set of facts, the Court applied like reasoning to reach a similar result. Ma.s.sachusetts again was compelled to recognize the validity of a six-week Nevada decree obtained by a husband who had left Ma.s.sachusetts after a court of that State had refused him a divorce and had granted his wife separate support. In the Nevada proceeding, the wife appeared personally and by counsel filed a cross-complaint for divorce, admitted the husband's residence, and partic.i.p.ated personally in the proceedings. After finding that it had jurisdiction of the plaintiff, defendant, and the subject matter involved, the Nevada court granted the wife a divorce, which was valid, final, and not subject to collateral attack under Nevada law. The husband married again, and on his return to Ma.s.sachusetts, his ex-wife pet.i.tioned the Ma.s.sachusetts court to adjudge him in contempt for failing to make payments for her separate support under the earlier Ma.s.sachusetts decree. Inasmuch as there was no intimation that under Ma.s.sachusetts law a decree of separate support would survive a divorce, recognition of the Nevada decree as valid accordingly necessitated a rejection of the ex-wife's contention.