Hawkins v. Lambert
Hawkins v. Lambert
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
Whether the claim of Elizabeth Lambert to a pension, on account of the services of her deceased husband in the revolutionary war, was assignable, and whether the execution of the assignment relied upon by the plaintiffs, (the witnesses having referred to a writing which was executed about eight years before the time they deposed, whilst the one exhibited bears date some fourteen years previous to that time,)
The fund in contest is claimed by Hawkins and wife, in right of the latter. It belongs to her and not to her husband. If he were to die it would go to her by survivorship, fie cannot sue for it in his own name, but she has to be joined with him in the action. She is barred by the judgment of the circuit court of Rockcastle county, in which it was decided that she was not entitled to the whole, but only to one-third of the pension, and therefore this suit cannot be maintained in her name. She claimed in that suit, as she does in the present action, the whole of the fund in contest, and the judgment of the court was against her claim. The fact that she based her right to it, in that action, on one ground, and in the present action, on a different ground, cannot diminish the effect of the former judgment as a bar, or authorize her to maintain another action to assert the same demand. It was incumbent on her to present in that action all the grounds of her claim, and all the evidence she relied on to sustain it.
A right of action cannot be twice asserted by placing it on different grounds at each time. If there be a discovery of a new fact, or additional testimony of such a character as authorizes are-hearing, a reversal, or modification of the judgment, the application for that purpose must be made to the court that rendered it. Nor does the fact that the former suit was prosecuted in the name of the wife alone, without making her husband a party, prevent the judgment from operating as a bar in this action, in which she is the real party in interest. So long as it remains
As the wife carried on the former action in her own name, and it does not appear in any part of the proceedings in that case that she was a married woman; and as the other parties to the action made no objection to its prosecution in her name alone, and her husband acquiesced in it, the rule of law which makes the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, in a case between the same parties, involving the same matters of controversy, a bar to another action, the object of the rule being to put an end to litigation, forbids that she should be permitted, in another action brought jointly by her and her husband, to re-litigate the same matters. It would violate both the object and the spirit of the rule.
If then, the plaintiffs are entitled to any relief, it can only be granted by the Rockcastle, and not by the Madison, circuit court. The former court has the power to vacate and modify the judgment for sufficient cause; the latter has no such power, having no jurisdiction for that purpose.
Wherefore, the judgment is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.