Opinion of the Court.

234 U.S.

because of the comparatively low level of the engine's draw-bar the effective grip was reduced to the point of practical inefficiency. Indeed, it is not seriously disputed that there exists as much reason for having the drawbars of the locomotive adjusted to a standard of height as exists in the case of freight cars.

The experience of the Interstate Commerce Commission, in seeing to the enforcement of the act of 1893, tended to emphasize the importance of interchangeable equipment upon the rolling stock of railroads engaged in interstate commerce, so that cars used in such commerce would readily couple with cars not so used, and that locomotives could be readily coupled with cars of either sort. The 16th Annual Report of the Commission, 1902, pp. 60, 61, recommended to Congress, inter alia: "That provisions relating to automatic couplers, grab irons, and the height of draw-bars, be made to apply to all locomotives, tenders, cars, and similar vehicles, both those equipped in interstate commerce and those used in connection therewith (except those trains, cars, and locomotives exempted by the acts of March 2, 1893, and April 1, 1896)." This recommendation appears to have been evoked by the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals in Johnson v. Southern Pacific Co., 117 Fed. Rep. 462, afterwards reversed by this court in 196 U. S. 1. The Court of Appeals held that there was nothing in the act of 1893 to require a common carrier engaged in interstate commerce to have every car on its railroad equipped with the same kind of coupling, or to require that every car should be equipped with a coupler that would couple automatically with every other coupler with which it might be brought into contact; and also that the act did not forbid the use of an engine not equipped with automatic couplers. Congress not only responded to the recommendation of the Commission, but enlarged the act more broadly by enacting (Amendment of March 2, 1903, set forth in foot-note,

re

supra) that the provisions and requirements of the original act should be held (a) to apply to common carriers by railroad in the Territories and the District of Columbia; (b) to apply in all cases whether or not the couplers brought together are of the same kind, make, or type; (c) that "the provisions and requirements lating to train brakes, automatic couplers, grab irons, and the height of draw-bars shall be held to apply to all trains, locomotives, tenders, cars, and similar vehicles used on any railroad engaged in interstate commerce, and in the Territories and the District of Columbia, and to all other locomotives, tenders, cars, and similar vehicles used in connection therewith," excepting those exempted by the act of March 2, 1893, as amended April 1, 1896, and those used upon street railways. We have to do especially with the latter clause. As was intimated in Southern Railway Co. v. United States, 222 U. S. 20, 25, its collocation of phrases is not altogether artistic. But at least the purpose is plain that where one vehicle is used in connection with another, that portion of the equipment of each that has to do with the safety and security of the attachment between them shall conform to standard. We cannot assent to the argument that the clause means only that the locomotives used upon all railroads engaged in interstate commerce and in the Territories and the District of Columbia are to be equipped with the appliances provided by the original act for locomotives, and so on with the other classes of cars, and that hence the amendatory act has merely the effect of prescribing the standard height of draw-bars with respect to freight cars, because the original act required such a standard only with respect to cars of that type. This would give altogether too narrow a construction to the language employed by Congress, and would lose sight of the spirit and purpose of the legislation. We deem the true intent and meaning to be that the provisions and requirements VOL. CCXXXIV-47

respecting train brakes, automatic couplers, grab irons, and the height of draw-bars shall be extended to all railroad vehicles used upon any railroad engaged in interstate commerce, and to all other vehicles used in connection with them, so far as the respective safety devices and standards are capable of being installed upon the respective vehicles. It follows that by the act of 1903 the standard height of draw-bars was made applicable to locomotive engines as well as to freight cars. And so it was held by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Chicago &c. Railway Co. v. United States, 196 Fed. Rep. 882, 884.

Judgment affirmed.

ROLLER v. MURRAY.

ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA.

No. 966. Motion to dismiss or affirm submitted May 25, 1914.-Decided June 22, 1914.

A mere error of law not involving a Federal question and committed in the exercise of jurisdiction by giving conclusive effect to a judgment rendered in another State affords no opportunity for a review in this court.

If the court rendering the judgment had jurisdiction of the subjectmatter and the parties, the merits of the controversy are not open for reinvestigation in the courts of another State; but, under the full faith and credit clause of the Federal Constitution and § 905, Rev. Stat., the latter must give the judgment such credit as it has in the State where it was rendered.

The proper method of obtaining a review of the Federal question adversely decided by the state court is by writ of error to this court under $237, Judicial Code, and not by collaterally attacking the judgment on the ground that it denies due process of law when it is invoked in the courts of another State.

234 U. S.

Opinion of the Court.

Where the effect of the judgment of another State dissolving an injunction as res judicata is denied on the ground that it is not a final decree, if the contention that a final decree was subsequently rendered which concluded the merits was not presented to the court, there is no basis for review in this court under § 237, Judicial Code on the ground that full faith and credit was not given to the original judgment.

Writ of error to review 71 W. Va. 161, dismissed.

THE facts, which involve the application of the full faith and credit clause of the Federal Constitution and the jurisdiction of this court to review a judgment of the state court, under § 237, Judicial Code, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. Holmes Conrad and Mr. Edward S. Conrad, for defendants in error, in support of the motion.

Mr. John E. Roller, pro se, and Mr. Herbert W. Wyant, for plaintiff in error, in opposition to the motion.

MR. JUSTICE PITNEY delivered the opinion of the court.

This writ of error was sued out under § 237, Jud. Code (act of March 3, 1911, 36 Stat. 1087, 1156, c. 231), in order to bring under review a judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of West Virginia (71 W. Va. 161), which affirmed a decree of the Circuit Court of Pendleton County, in that State, in an equitable action brought by plaintiff in error against defendants in error. His original bill was filed May 10, 1901, and an amended bill was filed in December, 1907. Complainant therein averred that in the year 1872 he was employed by the late Emily Hollingsworth, of the city of Philadelphia, as attorney, to recover for her a tract of 52,000 acres of land situate in the counties of Rockingham and Augusta, in the State of Virginia, and the county of Pendleton, in the State of West Virginia, and immediately undertook

the necessary work and labor, and diligently and faithfully endeavored to discharge the duties imposed upon him by the employment; that from time to time various parcels of land were recovered from adverse claimants, some by compromise settlements and others by actions of ejectment, until the entire tract of 52,000 acres was recovered, the actual litigation not being completed until some time in the year 1893; that portions of the property had been sold, so that in the year 1889 there remained of the lands recovered about 44,000 acres undisposed of, from the proceeds of the sale of which complainant was to receive payments on account of his services; that on or about April 1, 1889, the said Emily Hollingsworth made a deed of gift of the unsold lands, amounting to about 44,000 acres, to Mary H. Murray, one of the defendants, upon condition that she should pay to complainant one-fifth of the proceeds thereafter to be realized on the sale of the lands, and that she should hold the same as trustee for complainant, and complainant avers that the said Mary H. Murray accepted said deed upon that condition, and became liable to complainant for the said proportion of said proceeds of sale and for the reasonable value of his services rendered by him to Miss Hollingsworth and to be thereafter rendered to the said Mary H. Murray; that the latter, having accepted the conveyance, continued to act under it and in conformity with it until May 25, 1901, when for the first time she repudiated it. The object of the bill was to enforce a trust as to the undivided one-fifth of the land and of the purchase money upon sales made of the same, as against Mary H. Murray and her grantees with notice. Mrs. Murray pleaded that in a chancery cause brought by the same complainant against her, with others, in the Circuit Court for the County of Rockingham, in the State of Virginia, a court of competent jurisdiction, complainant asserted and claimed that there was due to him from her the same sum of money and the same