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.

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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

Opinion of the Court.

234 U.S.

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

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Opinion of the Court.

debt, as compensation for the same services alleged in his present bill, and that the cause of action was the same as now set up and asserted; that on June 24, 1907, a final decree was made and entered in said cause by the said Circuit Court, and this, on appeal, was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia in accordance with opinions found in 59 S. E. Rep. 421 (107 Virginia, 527), in which it was held that defendant Mary H. Murray was a privy in estate to Miss Hollingsworth, her grantor, and a privy also to the contract with complainant, and that the said Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, affirming the Circuit Court, determined that complainant had no right to recover on said cause of action, wherefore defendant pleaded the final adjudication of the Virginia court as res adjudicata. There was filed with the plea a certified copy of the record of the proceedings had in the Circuit Court of Rockingham County, Virginia, and in the Supreme Court of Appeals of that State. Subsequently, complainant filed in the Pendleton County Court written objections to the plea of res adjudicata, upon the following grounds: First, that the Circuit Court of Rockingham County, Virginia, after the rendition of the judgment pleaded by defendant, in another cause pending in that court between the Chesapeake-Western Company and the complainant, John E. Roller, and others, in which latter cause the said Mary H. Murray was impleaded as a party, decreed that the matters involved in the cause pending in the Circuit Court of Pendleton County, West Virginia, were not concluded by the judgment and decree of the Circuit Court of Rockingham County, Virginia, and did therefore vacate and dissolve certain injunctions previously awarded in that cause restraining complainant from further prosecution in the West Virginia court of his present suit against said Mary H. Murray. Secondly, that the cause of action and grounds of jurisdiction and relief in the present cause are

not the same as those set out in the record filed in the plea of res adjudicata. And thirdly, that the record and judgment of the Virginia court should not be enforced as res adjudicata for the following reasons: (a) that the courts of West Virginia do not enforce foreign judgments that are contrary to the laws and public policy of that State; (b) that the decree rests not upon rights arising ex contractu, or upon torts based on natural rights, but upon a penalty denounced by the policy of the law of Virginia which is not so denounced by the policy of the law of the State of West Virginia, and that it is not one of such nature as the courts of West Virginia will enforce; and (c) that the lex loci rei sitæ determines the jurisdiction and relief to be given by this court as to the land in the bill referred to, regardless of the judgment of any sister State as to land therein situate.

The Circuit Court of Pendleton County, West Virginia, sustained the plea of res adjudicata and dismissed the bill, and it is the judgment of the court of last resort of West Virginia affirming this decree that is now under review.

There are three assignments of error, the substance of which is as follows:

First, that the court erred in holding that the plea of res adjudicata filed by the defendant Mary H. Murray was a good and sufficient plea, for the reason that the decree therein relied upon in terms provided that it should be without prejudice to complainant's right to institute other proceedings upon a quantum meruit if so advised, and that the record shows the cause of action and ground of jurisdiction were not the same in the present West Virginia action as those set out and contained in the record in the Virginia action; the present action being based upon a quantum meruit for just and reasonable compensation for services rendered by complainant in and about the recovery of the tract of land in controversy.