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9 Johns. 221

Bowne v. Joy

New York Supreme Court

Decided August 15, 1812

New York Supreme Court · decided 1812-08-15

THIS was an action of assumpsit. The defendant pleaded another action brought by the plaintiffs against the defendant, for the same cause, in the court of common pleas of the county of Bristol, in the state of Massachusetts, and there pending in that court, &c. The plaintiffs demurred to this plea, and assigned causes of demurrer. The cause was submitted to the court, without argument.

Cited in Anderson (1889)’s definition of “Audit”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1812-08-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 37 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 1898 · most notably STANTON v. Embrey, Administrator (1877), Douglass v. Phenix Insurance (1893)

24 state decisions — followed in 14 states

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Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Per Curiam.

¶1It is not necessary to attend to the special causes of demurrer, because the plea is bad in substance. The pendency of a suit in a foreign court, by the same plaintiff against the same defendant, for the same cause of action, is no stay or bar to a new suit instituted here. This is the rule in the English courts, and it was carried so far in the case of Maule v. Murray, (7 Term Rep. 470.) as not to regard a foreign judgment which was taken subject- to a case then undecided, as to the amount. The exceptio rei judieake applies only to final definitive sentences abroad, upon the merits of the case. (1 Johns. Cases, 345.) Nor is this analogous to the case of the pendency of a prior foreign attachment, at the suit of a third person, for here the defendant would not be obliged to pay the money twice, since payment at least, if not a recovery in the one suit, might be pleaded puis darrein continuance to the other suit; and if the two suits should even proceed, pari passu, to judgment and execution, a satisfaction of either judgment might bp shown upon audita querela, or otherwise, in discharge of the other. Accoi’ding to the doctrine in Sparry’s Case, (5 Co. 61.) this plea would not be good even in the supreme court of Massachusetts, because it is a plea of a suit pending in an inferior court.

¶2Judgment of respondeas ouster.

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