## Facts

- Old Dominion Copper Mining & Smelting Co. sued promoter Albert S. Bigelow in Massachusetts equity actions seeking recovery of alleged secret profits from transactions in which promoters sold mining properties to the corporation they controlled.
- The corporation alleged that Bigelow and promoter Lewisohn controlled the corporation at the time of the sales and divided the resulting profits between them.
- Lewisohn, a New York citizen, was sued separately in federal court in New York based solely on diversity jurisdiction; that court sustained a demurrer and dismissed the bill against him.
- In Massachusetts, Bigelow’s demurrers were overruled; after an evidentiary hearing, the trial court entered decrees for the corporation totaling $2,178,673.33, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed.
- Bigelow argued that the New York federal judgment in Lewisohn’s favor barred the Massachusetts suits against him because the alleged wrong was the same and the promoters were alleged joint tortfeasors.

## Issues

1. Whether full faith and credit required Massachusetts to treat the New York federal diversity judgment dismissing claims against Lewisohn as res judicata barring suit against Bigelow on the same underlying transactions.
2. Whether an alleged joint tortfeasor is in privity with a codefendant sued separately such that a judgment for one precludes later litigation against the other.
3. Whether Bigelow could invoke estoppel by judgment when he was neither a party nor subject to being bound by the earlier New York action.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the Massachusetts judgment for the corporation.
- Massachusetts was not constitutionally required to treat the New York federal judgment for Lewisohn as a conclusive bar to the Massachusetts actions against Bigelow.
- Bigelow was neither a party nor a privy to the New York case, and the relationship between alleged joint tortfeasors did not supply the privity needed for claim or issue preclusion.
- Any significance of the New York judgment for the Massachusetts case was, at most, persuasive precedent rather than binding res judicata.

## Legal Principles

- A federal judgment rendered solely on diversity jurisdiction is entitled in other states to the same preclusive effect it would receive in the state where rendered, but not greater effect.
- Estoppel by judgment requires that the person to be bound (or to claim the benefit) was a party to the earlier case or in true privity with a party; privity ordinarily involves a mutual or successive relationship to the same property right, not merely aligned interests.
- In actions ex delicto imposing joint and several liability, a judgment favoring one alleged tortfeasor does not, without privity, bar a later suit against another alleged tortfeasor whose liability turns on his own culpability.
- Mutuality limits estoppel: a litigant who could not have been bound by an adverse judgment in the earlier case cannot claim a favorable judgment from that case as a conclusive bar.

## Conclusion

The Court held that full faith and credit required Massachusetts to give the New York federal diversity judgment only the preclusive effect it would have in New York, and because Bigelow was not a party or privy to that litigation, the judgment for Lewisohn did not preclude separate recovery against Bigelow for alleged promoter secret profits.


Bigelow v. Old Dominion Copper Mining & Smelting Co., 225 U.S. 111 (1912)