| Conn. | Jun 15, 1878
The first claim of the defendant under his assignment of errors is, that the prior judgment rendered by justice Platt was for the same cause of action as that of the present suit, and that the court erred in holding that the matter in dispute in this case was not res adjudicóla.
The facts disclosed by the record are in direct conflict with this claim of the defendant. It appears that the only claim made by the plaintiff before the justice was to recover the amount due upon an order which the defendant had drawn in his favor upon one Chapman, which had neither been accepted nor paid by Chapman, and the amount of which had been credited to the defendant in the settlement of accounts between him and the plaintiff. The plaintiff’s claim in that suit was confined to the order; hence it is clear that the justice did not pass and could not have passed upon his present claim.
But the defendant claims further in argument, that although the subject of this suit was not in fact before the justice, yet it was the duty of the plaintiff to have embraced it in his demand in that suit. Here too we think the defendant’s claim is equally in conflict with the facts of the record. The plaintiff did not, until after the trial, discover that the order he had drawn on Brooks, which was to have been charged by him to the defendant, and for which the latter had been credited in the settlement, had not been paid. It is difficult to see upon what principle the plaintiff was bound to make any such claim before the justice, when he was ignorant of its existence.
That a receipt is not conclusive between the parties is a well established doctrine in this state. This was settled in the case of Fuller v. Crittenden, 9 Conn., 401, and in the case of Tucker v. Baldwin, 13 Conn., 143.
There is no error in the judgment complained of.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.