William Strong

“ For all legal purposes the result of an election is what it is declared to be by the authorized board of canvassers empowered to make the canvass at the time when the returns should be made, until their decision has been reversed by a superior power, and a reversal has no effect upon acts lawfully done prior to it. The county of Bourbon is therefore estopped, in a suit by a bondholder whose bonds were issued in 1870, from asserting that the canvass of 1867 was incorrect, and that in fact no majority of the qualified electors had voted in favor of the issue of the bonds. ”

“ But it is certain that a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction is everywhere conclusive evidence of every fact upon which it must necessarily have been founded. As between Lewis, therefore, and Bourbon County the judgment of the State Supreme Court finally established that the coupons which he held, and which he subsequently placed in the hands of Block, the plaintiff in the present suit, were invalid, and constituted no part of the debt of the county. As that judgment was pleaded in the present case, it was a conclusive answer to the suit so far as it was founded upon those coupons. ”

“ Now that a judgment in a suit between two parties is conclusive in any other suit between them, or their privies, of every matter that was decided therein, and that was essential to the decision made, is a doctrine too familiar to need citation of authorities in its support. ”