MR. JUSTICE FIELD, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
The only question presented for our determination is whether the judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Tennessee, rendered on the 25th of January, 1886, was valid as a claim against the estate of the dissolved insurance corporation in the hands of its receiver, to be allowed in the distribution of its assets. The Court of Appeals, in affirming the order of the Supreme Court of New York at special term, disallowing the claim, held that the judgment was invalid, and placed its decision on the ground that the United States Circuit Court had not, at the time, jurisdiction of the defendant. The error alleged is that the court, in this ruling, failed to give that faith and credit to the judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States to which it was entitled. It is well settled that the judgments and decrees of a Circuit Court of the United States are to be accorded in the State courts the same effect as would be accorded to the judgments and decrees of a state tribunal of equal authority. It is within the jurisdiction of this court to consider and determine that question, that is, whether such effect was given in any particular case, whenever properly presented. But in determining that question this court must, in the first instance, consider whether the Federal court had jurisdiction to render the judgment or decree to which, it is contended, due effect was not given, for, as a matter of course, the jurisdiction of every court is open to inquiry when its judgments and decrees are produced in the court of a State, and it is there sought to give them effect.
Looking at the judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States, we are satisfied that the ruling of the Court of Appeals was correct. That judgment purports to be against the insurance company, but that company, at the time, had no legal
The only measures he took, by the authority of that court, were to employ counsel to argue a pending case in the Supreme Court of the United States, brought there to review a judgment rendered in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Tennessee against the corporation. When appointed receiver he found that case pending in the Supreme Court upon writ of error to review that judgment against the corporation, and also that the company had mortgaged a portion of its property and assigned a mortgage which it held of other property, together amounting to twenty one thousand dollars, to indemnify the sureties on a supersedeas bond given on suing out the writ of error. The judgment of reversal was rendered, not upon any substitution of the receiver, but upon the record as it stood in that court. By the reversal the incumbrances upon the property of the corporation were removed. The remittitur being sent to the court below, the judgment against the corporation was set aside as it stood on the records of that court. The case was then in the position of an ordinary action against a defunct
In the condition in which the case in the Circuit Court of the United States was left after the reversal of its judgment, it had no jurisdiction to proceed with the action beyond entering the order under the mandate of this court. The subsequent trial and judgment were but proceedings against a corporation which had no existence, and vitality could not be given by them to the artificial body which had become extinct.
Judgment affirmed.
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