it was authorized to build a road from the Colorado river to the Pacific ocean, and thence along the coast up to San Francisco; and it filed maps thereof in four sections. San Buenaventura was the point where the westward line first touched the Pacific ocean. One of these maps was of that portion of the line extending from the western boundary of Los Angeles county, a point east of San Buenaventura, and through that place to San Miguel Mission, In the direction of San Francisco. In other words, San Buenaventura was not the terminus of any line of definite location from the Colorado river westward, whether shown by one or more maps, but only an intermediate point on one sectional map. When the four maps were filed, and in 1872, the land department, holding that the Atlantic & Pacific Company was authorized to build, not only from the Colorado river directly to the Pacific ocean, but also thence north to San Francisco, approved them as establishing the line of definite location. Subsequently, and while Mr. Justice Lamar was secretary of the interior, the matter was re-examined, and it was properly held that under the act of 1866 the grant to the Atlantic & Pacific was exhausted when its line reached the Pacific ocean. San Buenaventura was therefore held to be the western terminus, and the location of the line approved to that point. The fact that its line was located, and maps filed thereof in sections, is immaterial. St. Paul & P. R. Co. v. Northern Pac. R. Co., 139 U. S. 1, 11 Sup. Ct. 389. Indeed, all the transcontinental roads, it is be lieved filed their maps of route in sections. So, the question is whether the filing a map of definite location from the Colorado river, through San Buenaventura, to San Francisco, under a claim of right to construct a road the entire distance, is good as a map of definite location from the Colorado river to San Buenaventura, the latter point being the limit of the grant. We think unquestionably it is. Though a party claims more than he is legally entitled to, his claim ought not to be rejected for that to which he has a right. The purpose of filing a map of definite location is to enable the land department to designate the lands passing under the grant; and, when a map of such a line is filed, full information is given, and, so far as that line may legally extend, the law perfects the title. It surely cannot be that a company must determine at its peril the extent to which its grant may go, or that a mistake in such determination works a forfeiture of all its right to lands." 146 U. S. 570, 596, 13 Sup. Ct. 152.

subject to a condition subsequent until the act of forfeiture of 1886; that, by that act of forfeiture, the title of the Atlantic & Pacific was retaken by the general government, and retaken for its benefit, and not that of the Southern Pacific Company; and that the latter company has no title of any kind to these lands." 146 U. S. 607, 13 Sup. Ct. 160.

In the cases of U. S. v. Colton Marble & Lime Co. and U. S. v. Southern Pac. R. Co., 146 U. S. 615, 13 Sup. Ct. 163, it was adjudged that the proviso in the act of March 3, 1871 (16 Stat. 573, c. 122, giving lands in aid of the construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad), that the grant should "in no way affect or impair the rights, present or prospective, of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company," operated to except the indemnity lands of the Atlantic & Pacific Company from the grant to the Southern Pacific Company.

The former cases were decided in this court on the 12th day of December, 1892.

A petition for rehearing was presented to the several members of the court, but a rehearing was not granted. In that petition the Southern Pacific Railroad Company insisted that this court had erred in various particulars, among them the following:

In not giving due legal effect to the forfeiture act of July 6, 1886, its contention (as on the original hearing) being that the legal operation and effect of that act were to avoid the grant to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company as of the date of the act of 1866, and to restore to the United States, as of that date, the title of all the lands embraced in the forfeiture, leaving nothing in the way of the full enjoyment by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company of the grant made to it; consequently, that all proceedings taken by the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, under the act of 1866, were avoided and defeated as absolutely and effectually as if the grant had never been made, and no proceedings taken in execution of it; and

In respect to the "designation of line under the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad maps and the effect and operation thereof."

The present suit was brought by the United States against the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and D. O. Mills and G. L. Lansing as trustees in a mortgage executed by that company on the 1st day of April, 1875 (the same trustees and mortgage referred to in the former cases), as well as against certain individuals and corporations, to quiet the title of the United States to the lands involved in this suit. It was pending at the time the former cases were decided in this court. The lands now in controversy are situated opposite to and are coterminous with the first, second, and fourth sections of the Southern Pacific Railroad as constructed between 1873 and?

proved by the secretary of the interior; that, by such act, the title to these lands passed, under the grant of 1866, to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, and remained held by it

indemnity limits of the grant to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company made by the twentythird section of the Texas & Pacific act of March 3, 1871; the 61,939.62 acres patented

to that company being opposite to the first and fourth sections of its road. It may be said that the lands here in dispute belong to one or the other of the following classes: Lands within the common granted limits of both the Atlantic & Pacific grant of 1866 and the Southern Pacific grant of 1871, lands within the granted limits of the Southern Pacific grant and the indemnity limits of the Atlantic & Pacific grant, lands within the Southern Pacific indemnity limits and the Atlantic & Pacific granted limits, lands within the common indemnity limits of both grants. Of those in dispute, 219,012.93 acres have not been surveyed by the United States.

But all the lands now in dispute are within the limits of the grant to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, if the maps filed by that company in 1872, and which were approved by the land department, are to be regarded as maps of definite location. This is substantially admitted to be a correct statement of the controlling question before the court; for the defendants, in their very able argument, state that the lands involved in this suit "are within the limits which would have appertained to the grant to the Atlantic & Pacific upon the 1872 route, if that had been an authorized route, and if a definite location had been duly made thereon so as to attach the grant to specific lands."

The contingencies here suggested have been fully met by this court, for it was distinctly adjudged in the former cases, as between the government and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company (146 U. S. 570, 596, 13 Sup. Ct. 152), that the maps filed in 1872 sufficiently identified the lands granted to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company on the contemplated line between the Colorado river and San Buenaventura on the Pacific coast, although, for want of authority in that company to construct a railroad to San Francisco, they did not secure to the company any lands north of San Buenaventura; that is, those maps were directly adjudged to be maps adequately*fixing or locating the line of the road under the act of 1866. The records of those cases having been introduced in the present suit, there is no room for doubt (if those records are competent evidence) as to what was in issue and what was adjudged in the former cases. The maps which in this case are relied upon by the United States as maps of definite location, and which the Southern Pacific Railroad Company denies to be of that character, are the identical maps which the government relied on in the former cases, and the same which that company referred to and made part of its answer in the former litigation, and which were adjudged by this court, in conformity with the contention of the government, to be valid maps of definite location, the acceptance of which made it impossible for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to acquire any interest in any lands granted to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company that were forfeited to the United States by the act of 1886.

It is said, however, that, under the pleadings and evidence in this collateral proceeding, it is open to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company to renew the contest as to the sufficiency of the maps of 1872 filed by the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, and to show that they were not maps of definite location.

Is this position consistent with the settled rule of law as to the conclusiveness, between parties and their privies, of the final determination by a court of competent jurisdiction of matters put in issue by the pleadings?

The importance of this question, independently of the magnitude of the interests to be affected by our decision, and of the earnest contention of learned counsel, justifies a reference to some of the adjudged cases, showing the grounds upon which this salutary rule rests.

The general principle announced in numerous cases is that a right, question, or fact distinctly put in issue, and directly determined by a court of competent jurisdiction, as a ground of recovery, cannot be disputed in a subsequent suit between the same parties or their privies; and, even if the second suit is for a different cause of action, the right, question, or fact once so determined must, as between the same parties or their privies, be taken as conclusively established, so long as the judgment in the first suit remains unmodified. This general rule is demanded by the very object for which civil courts have been established, which is to secure the peace and repose of society by the settlement of matters capable of judicial determination. Its enforcement is essential to the maintenance of social order; for the aid of judicial tribunals would not be invoked for the vindication of rights of person and property if, as between parties and their privies, conclusiveness did not attend the judgments of such tribunals in respect of all matters properly put in issue, and actually determined by them.

Among the cases in this court that illustrate the general rule are Hopkins v. Lee, 6 Wheat. 109, 113; Smith v. Kernochen, 7 How. 198, 216; Thompson v. Roberts, 24 How. 233, 240; Packet Co. v. Sickles, 24 How. 333, 340, 341, 343; Russell v. Place, 94 U. S. 606, 608; Cromwell v. Sac Co., 94 U. S. 351; Campbell v. Rankin, 99 U. S. 261; Lumber Co. v. Buchtel, 101 U. S. 638; Bissell v. Spring Valley Tp., 124 U. S. 225, 230, 8 Sup. Ct. 495; and Johnson Steel Street-Rail Co. v. William Wharton, Jr., & Co., 152 U. S. 253, 14 Sup. Ct. 608.

In Hopkins v. Lee, which was a suit in equity by the purchaser of land to compel the vendor to remove certain incumbrances upon it, it was held that a fact established therein, and made the basis of a decree, could not be disputed in a subsequent action of covenant brought by the latter against the former for not conveying certain lands, part of the consideration, the court saying that the rule on that subject had found its way into every system of jurisprudence, not only from its obvious fitness and propriety, but because without it an end could not be put to litigation; in

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Smith. Kernochen, which was ejectment by an assignee of a mortgage to recover possession of the mortgaged premises, that a final decree in a previous suit, brought by the mortgagee against the mortgagor to foreclose the mortgage, adjudging the mortgage to be invalid for want of authority in the mortgagor to execute it, concluded the question of title, the court observing that the case came within the general rule that the judgment of a court of concurrent jurisdiction directly upon the point is, as a plea, a bar, or as evidence conclusive between the same parties or their privies upon the same matters, when brought directly in question in another court; in Thompson v. Roberts, that the judgment of a court of law, or a decree of a court of equity, directly upon the same point, and between the same parties, is good as a plea in bar, and conclusive when given in evidence in a subsequent suit; in Packet Co. v. Sickles, that, to the end that rights might be secured, and the repose of society preserved, and that limIts might be imposed upon the faculties of litigation, the presumption had been adopted that the thing adjudged by a court of competent jurisdiction, under definite conditions, shall be received in evidence "as irrefragable truth," such a presumption being a guaranty of the future efficiency and binding operation of the judgment; in Cromwell v. Sac Co., that a judgment upon the merits constitutes an absolute bar to a subsequent suit upon the same cause of action in respect to every matter offered and received in evidence, or which might have been offered to sustain or defeat the claim in controversy, while, if the second action is upon a different claim or demand, the judgment in the prior action operates as an estoppel only as to those matters in issue or points controverted upon the determination of which the finding or verdict was rendered, the inquiry in such case being "as to the point or question actually litigated and determined in the original action, not what might have been litigated and determined"; In Russell v. Place, that "a judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, upon a question directly involved in one suit, is conclusive as to that question in another suit between the same parties"; in Campbell v. Rankin, that in an action to recover damages for trespass upon a mining claim, the record of a former suit between the same parties, involving the same question of interfering mining claims, was admissible as evidence, the court observing that, "whenever the same question has been in issue, and tried, and judgment rendered, it is conclusive of the issue so de*cided in any subsequent suit between the same parties"; in Lumber Co. v. Buchtel, that, in a suit for the amount of the first installment due on a contract for the purchase of timber lands (the defense being that the defendant had been induced to make the contract by false and fraudulent representations), a judgment based upon a finding that no such repre

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sentations were made was conclusive in respect of that matter in a subsequent action brought on the contract to recover a different installment; in Bissell v. Spring Valley Tp., that an adjudication, in an action on coupons of municipal bonds, sustaining the defense that the municipality never executed the bonds, and that the bonds were not its legal obligations, was conclusive in a subsequent action brought by the same party on different coupons of the same bonds; and in Johnson Steel Street-Rail Co. v. William Wharton, Jr., & Co., that in an action to recover stipulated royalties for a named period for guard rails constructed according to the specifications of a certain patent, in which judgment was given for the plaintiff, the defendant in a second suit, brought to recover like royalties for a later period, could not make the same defense, although, by reason of the small amount in dispute, he was precluded from having the judgment in the first suit reviewed upon writ of error, this court stating that it was a general rule, having its foundation in a wise public policy, that the final judgment of a court, at least one of superior jurisdiction, competent under the law of its creation to deal with the parties and the subject-matter, and having acquired jurisdiction of the parties, concludes those parties and their privies in respect of every matter put in issue by the pleadings and determined by such court. See, also, Lessee of Parrish v. Ferris, 2 Black, 606, 608; Packet Co. v. Sickles, 5 Wall. 580, 592; Dowell v. Applegate, 152 U. S. 327, 342, 14 Sup. Ct. 611.

The latest expressions of opinion by this court on this question are in Last Chance Min. Co. v. Tyler Min. Co., 157 U. S. 683, 691, 15 Sup. Ct. 733, and New Orleans v. Citizens' Bank of Louisiana, 167 U. S. 371, 396, 17 Sup. Ct. 905. In the first of these cases it was held that a judgment by default in favor of the Last Chance Mining Company against the Tyler Mining Company for a parcel of land embraced within the boundaries of certain mining claims alleged to have been legally located, and to belong to the former company, precluded the latter company from contending, in a subsequent action for part of a mineral vein not embraced within the former suit, but within the mining claims involved in the first suit, that the mining claims in question had not been legally located; the court observing that a judgment by default was just as conclusive an adjudication between the parties of what is essential to support the judgment as one rendered after answer and contest, the essence of estoppel by judgment being that there has been a judicial determination of a fact, and the question always is, has there been a determination? and not, upon what evidence and by what means was it reached?

In New Orleans v. Citizens' Bank of Louisiana it was held that the final and unreversed judgment of a court in Louisiana of superior jurisdiction upon the issue duly raised by the

pleadings whether the bank was exempt by contract with the state from taxes assessed against it for particular years concluded that question, as between the same parties and their representatives, in respect of taxes assessed against it for subsequent years. In that case the court said: "The estoppel resulting from the thing adjudged does not depend upon whether there is the same demand in both cases, but exists, even although there be different demands, when the question upon which the recovery of the second demand depends has, under identical circumstances and conditions, been previously concluded by a judgment between the parties or their privies."

In view of these adjudications, it would seem that the controlling inquiry is whether, under the pleadings in the former cases, the sufficiency of the Atlantic & Pacific maps of 1872 as maps of definite location was a matter in issue, and determined, as between the United States and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. That that matter was in issue, and was actually decided, in the former cases, is too clear to admit of doubt. That it was material is equally clear, for, upon its determination depended the question whether the grant of public lands to the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company attached to any specific lands along its line to which the forfeiture act of 1886 could apply. If those maps were valid maps of definite location, then, according to the settled adjudications of this court, to which reference has often been made, the right of that company to earn the lands appertaining to its line, thus definitely located, attached, by relation, as of the date of the grant to it in 1866; and in this view the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, holding the junior grant, took none of the lands appertaining to that line by reason of the definite location and construction of its line. Thus, also, those lands were in such condition, at the date of the forfeiture act of 1886, that they could be forfeited as lands in which the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company then had an interest, and, in accordance with the act of congress, be fully restored to the public domain for the exclusive benefit of the United States, unaffected by the later grant made to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

The only way in which, in the former cases, the court could have avoided a decision as to the character of those maps, was to have held that, whether they were maps of definite location or not, the rights of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company attached, upon the declaration of forfeiture, to the lands then in dispute, and that congress was without power to restore them to the public domain. So far from sustaining that view, the court expressly adjudged that, upon the acceptance of the Atlantic & Pacific maps of 1872, the rights of that company in the lands granted attached as of the date of the grant of 1866; and that it was not possible for the Southern Pacific

Railroad Company, by the location of its road, whether located before or after the acceptance of the maps of 1872, to acquire any interest whatever in the lands there in dispute that would prevent congress, upon forfeiting the rights of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, from restoring such lands to the public domain to be disposed of by the United States as it saw proper.

It is, in effect, said that the failure of the government in the former cases to aver, in words, that the maps of 1872 were maps of "definite location," leaves the question of the sufficiency of those maps open in this case relating to different lands. It seems to be forgotten that the amended bill was in exact conformity with the act of 1866, which, in the third section,-the one making the grant,used the words, "at the time the line of said road is designated by a plat thereof filed in the office of the commissioner of the general land office." The word "designated" in that act meant no more nor less than the words "definitely located" mean. When the Southern Pacific Railroad Company denied that the Atlantic & Pacific line had been sufficiently designated, or that there had been a valid location of it, both litigants, as well as the court, understood, and properly, that the case presented the question whether there had been such a definite location of the Atlantic & Pacific line as the act of congress required. That that company so understood the word "designated," as used in the third section of the act of 1866, is beyond question; for its answer filed in the former cases on the 30th of December, 1889, in which it claimed the lands then in controversy, refers to the map filed by it on the 3d of April, 1871, as one by which "it designated the line of its said railroad." And when it was adjudged that the maps of 1872 indicated a definite location of the line of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, the settled rules of law forbid that the defeated party should reopen that question in another suit, relating to other lands appertaining to the line so designated. The matter alleged by the government, and upon which the recovery proceeded, was, we repeat, the sufficiency of the maps of 1872 to entitle the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company to earn the lands there in dispute.

It is also said that the decision in the former cases concluded, at most, only the question of title in respect of the lands there in controversy. This cannot be correct when the lands in both suits have a common source of title, and the title depends upon the existence or nonexistence of the same fact or facts. If the accepted maps filed by the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company in 1872 sufficiently located the line of that company, it could not possibly be that they were valid maps of definite location as to part of the lands appertaining to that line, and not maps of that character in respect of other lands embraced by it. Consequently, the former judgment, while unmodified, determined the character of the

maps, as between the United States and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. If the court had adjudged in the former cases that those maps were neither filed nor accepted as maps of definite location, but were only maps of general route, could it be doubted that the government would have been estopped from asserting to the contrary in a subsequent suit involving other lands claimed by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company which were covered by the same maps, and appertained to the same line? Must a different principle be applied because the decision was favorable to the government upon the question whether the maps of 1872 were maps of definite location? Certainly not.

But it is earnestly insisted that a prior judgment cannot operate as an estoppel in a subsequent suit between the same parties, unless it be pleaded when there is an opportunity to do so; that such an opportunity existed in this suit; and that, the United States having failed to avail itself of that opportunity, it was open to the court to determine the truth of the matter upon all the evidence now before it.

This contention is based upon the forty-fifth rule in equity, providing: "No special replication to any answer shall be filed. But if any matter alleged in the answer shall make it necessary for the plaintiff to amend his bill, he may have leave to amend the same with or without payment of costs, as the court, or a judge thereof, may in his discretion direct." Under this rule, it is said, the United States had an opportunity to amend its bill, and in that mode to have met the allegations of the amended answer of 1893; but, having failed to ask leave to amend, it lost the benefit of the former judgment.

The part of the amended answer of 1893 to which counsel refer as making an issue or issues not made in the former cases, and which, it is contended, must have been met by an amended bill if the government expected to rely upon the prior judgment, is as follows:

"And the said respondents deny that said Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company did locate on the ground or designate upon a plat or map the whole of said line of railroad, under or in accordance with said act, from Springfield, Missouri, by way of the points or places named in said act, or otherwise, to the Pacific ocean, and deny that it ever lawfully located or adopted or designated any part of said line in the state of California; and deny that on or about the day of 1866, or at any other time, said company did file any such plat in the office of the commissioner of the general land office, and deny that at that or at any such time any such designation or location of said line of railroad was approved by the secretary of the interior; and deny that the odd sections of public lands on each side of said road for thirty miles were withdrawn from market or reserved; and deny that the lands in suit herein, or any of them, fell within the twenty-mile limits of any such line, or

were ever lawfully withdrawn from market, or reserved for, or for the benefit of, the said Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company; and deny that the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company ever designated a line of railroad between the Colorado river and the Pacific ocean by a map thereof filed in the office of the commissioner of the general land office, or made or filed a map of definite location of a route from the Colorado river to the Pacific ocean, whether by the most practical and eligible route or otherwise howsoever. The said respondents aver that the said Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company never made any actual or definite location of its railroad in California, nor constructed any part of a railroad in said state, under or according to the act of congress approved July 27, 1866, or any amendments, modifications, or supplements thereto or otherwise howsoever. The pretended location of a route by said Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company in California never was or became an actual or definite location, or anything else than an attempted or pretended designation of a general route for a railroad from San Francisco to The Needles, and such pretended location or designation of route was a colorable and fraudulent location or designation of an unauthorized and impracticable line. The secretary of the interior never undertook to accept such pretended location or designation as anything else than a designation of a general route, and no right to or interest in any public lands was, or could be, acquired by said railroad company by reason of any such attempted location or designation, or any act of acceptance thereof."

Undoubtedly, there are cases in which a party may lose the benefit of a prior judgment, in respect of matters determined by it, when, having an opportunity to plead such judgment, he fails to do so. But that principle has no application in the present case. Under equity rule 45, a general replication to the amended answer of the defendant company sufficed, unless that amended answer contained such matter as made it "necessary" that the government should amend the bill. But, when a former recovery is to be relied on by the plaintiff, it can only be necessary to amend the bill when the rules of pleading imperatively require that to be done in order to obtain the benefit of such recovery. No amendment of the bill was necessary in this case, for the reason that the judgment in the prior suit-the present suit being on a different cause of action -could not be pleaded as an absolute bar arising upon the face of the record, but could be used as evidence to support the contention that the maps of 1872 sufficiently identified the lands granted by the act of 1866. The contrary is again asserted by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company in this suit. But that precise issue, we have seen, was made in the former suit, and was determined for the United States. And to establish that fact the United States introduced the former record as evidence in its behalf. To say that the govern