George Shiras, Jr.

“ Such evidence was competent to support the plaintiff's replication to the defendant's plea in the present suit, that the plaintiff had received full satisfaction and payment of her said claim. In admitting such evidence the court did not refuse to give full faith and credit to the Michigan judgment, but properly allowed evidence, not to contradict the necessary legal import of that judgment, but to show the real meaning of the parties to that suit in agreeing upon its discontinuance. ”

“ But the plaintiffs in error deny that this is the effect of the order, and insist that the pleas present a case of retraxit, by which the United States forever lost their action, because they voluntarily announced to the court that, on the defendants' paying the costs, the suit would be dismissed. Such an announcement does not imply that they had no cause of action, or, if they had, that they intended to renounce it, or that it was adjusted. Nonsuits are frequently taken on payment of costs by the adverse party, in order that the controversy may be arranged out of court ”

“ Finding, as we do, that the courts of Illinois gave all that faith and credit to the judgment and judicial proceedings in the Michigan court to which they were entitled under the Constitution of the United States, the other errors assigned we cannot consider, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois is affirmed. ”

“ The entry that the 'cause is hereby discontinued by consent of both parties, without cost to either party,' although entered as a judgment of the court, do not of themselves import an agreement to terminate the controversy, nor imply an intention to merge the cause of action in the judgment. The case of Halderman v. United States, 91 U.S. 584, 23 L. ed. 433, is quite in point. There a judgment entry in the words 'dismissed agreed' was pleaded, in a subsequent action, as a former recovery; but it was held by the circuit court and by this court that such an entry did not sustain the plea. ”

“ United States, the counsel for the plaintiff in error cite the subsequent case of United States v. Parker, 120 U.S. 89, 96, 30 L. ed. 601, 604, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 454, which they contend must be understood as overruling the prior case. In this view of the two cases we do not agree. ”