Patent Office Pamphlets; May 28, 1914 to May 6, 1915

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1914 Excerpt: ... Res Adjudicata By FAIRFAX BAYARD, Member of the Board of Examiners-in-Chief, U. S. Patent Office. INTRODUCTION. If the judgments of courts had no substantial element of finality, such judgments and legal proceedings generally would be of very little value. Neither the parties to the suit nor others could rely upon a judicial determination as a guide in the further conduct of their affairs. They would be forever embarrassed by the possibility that the first j udgment would be superseded by a different judgment. Moreover, if the party prevailing in a legal contest could be dragged through other contests by the losing party, upon the same question, the burdens of legal proceedings would be unbearable; and the ultimate decision, if this were so, would depend more on the relative powers of financial endurance of the parties than upon the relative merits of their cases. To produce certainty in the minds of litigants and others, with regard to matters which have been passed upon by the courts, and to keep down the burdens of litigation, and to reduce the opportunity of the richer litigant to exhaust his poorer opponent by protracting the litigation, the courts have restricted in many ways the right to present again for determination questions in regard to which a determination has once been made, or in regard to which an opportunity to secure a determination has been once accorded. All of the following branches of the law are based entirely or in part upon the necessity for regarding, to a greater or less extent, any question as finally settled that has once been judicially passed upon: The doctrine of the law of the case; the law of reconsideration and reopening, and of review by the same court or a court of coordinate jurisdiction; that portion of the law of app...