140 Iowa 105 | Iowa | 1908
— The pleadings are very voluminous and complicated, covering many closely printed pages of the abstract. The controversy is really over the proper location of the highway between the east halves of sections nine and sixteen in a township in Monona County, Iowa. Plaintiff owns the northwest quarter of section sixteen, and defendants Uhl and Tadlock Brothers the southwest quarter of section nine, in the same township. This highway was legally established in the year 1894, and it is claimed by defendant Monona County that the fence on the north side of plaintiff’s land is something like thirty feet north of where it should be, constituting an obstruction to the highway. This plaintiff denies, and he claims that the fence is on the true line between the highway
Was there then such an action pending as that, when finally passed to judgment or decree, the decree would be binding upon the plaintiff and the county? This is the pivotal question in the case. Plaintiffs in these actions are the same, and the issues are practically identical. True, the defendants are not all the same, either in name or in fact; but it is not necessary to sustain the plea that they be the same. It is enough that some of them be the same if the actions are based upon substantially the same facts. The road supervisor and the township trustees of Monona. County were sued in a representative capacity in the first action, and, on behalf of the public, they filed a counterclaim involving the identical issues presented by the second suit. In the second case the county was a party defendant, and it, too, represented the public as did the road supervisor and the trustees in the first one. Under such a state of facts, it is clear that the second suit should be abated. A judgment in the first case against the road supervisor and the trustees upon the issues tendered would have been conclusive upon the county. In each ease there was a defendant who stood for the general public, and the decision in either would be binding upon the public as res adjudicata. Lyman v. Faris, 53 Iowa, 498; Clark v. Wolf, 29 Iowa, 197; Millikan v. La Fayette, 118 Ind. 323 (20 N. E. 847); Ereeman on Judgment, section 178; Cannon v. Nelson, 83 Iowa, 242; People v. Holladay, 93 Cal. 242
Much is also made in argument of the admission by defendant Uhl. For manifest reasons this was not binding upon the county, and is of no consequence in the case. Something is said about the proceedings on the establishment of the road being insufficient and inefficient in law to the legal establishment of a highway, but no reasons are pointed out to sustain such a contention, and we dis
The decree of the District Court is correct^ and it is affirmed.