Opinion of the Court. of the defendant as an answer, in an adverse suit in a foreign country, whose laws they were under no obligation to obey." 11 M. & W. 877, 894; S. C. 13 Law Journal (N. S.) Exch. 168, 176. But it is now settled in England that, while an appearance by the defendant in a court of a foreign country, for the purpose of protecting his property already in the possession of that court, may not be deemed a voluntary appearance, yet an appearance solely for the purpose of protecting other property in that country from seizure is considered as a voluntary appearance. De Cosse Brissac v. Rathbone, (1860) 6 H. & N. 301; S. C. 20 Law Journal (N. S.) Exch. 238; Schibsby v. Westenholz, (1870) L. R. 6 Q. B. 155, 162; Voinet v. Barrett, (1885) 1 Cab. & El. 554; S. C. 54 Law Journal (N. S.) Q. B. 521, and 55 Law Journal (N. S.) Q. B. 39. The present case is not one of a person travelling through or casually found in a foreign country. The defendants, although they were not citizens or residents of France, but were citizens and residents of the State of New York, and their principal place of business was in the city of New York, yet had a storehouse and an agent in Paris, and were accustomed to purchase large quantities of goods there, although they did not make sales in France. Under such circumstances, evidence that their sole object in appearing and carrying on the litigation in the French courts was to prevent property, in their storehouse at Paris, belonging to them, and within the jurisdiction, but not in the custody, of those courts, from being taken in satisfaction of any judgment that might be recovered against them, would not, according to our law, show that those courts did not acquire jurisdiction of the persons of the defendants. It is next objected that in those courts one of the plaintiffs was permitted to testify not under oath, and was not subjected to cross-examination by the opposite party, and that the defendants were, therefore, deprived of safeguards which are by our law considered essential to secure honesty and to detect fraud in a witness; and also that documents and papers were admitted in evidence, with which the defendants had no con Opinion of the Court. nection, and which would not be admissible under our own system of jurisprudence. But it having been shown by the plaintiffs, and hardly denied by the defendants, that the practice followed and the method of examining witnesses were according to the laws of France, we are not prepared to hold that the fact that the procedure in these respects differed from that of our own courts is, of itself, a sufficient ground for impeaching the foreign judgment. It is also contended that a part of the plaintiffs' claim is affected by one of the contracts between the parties having been made in violation of the revenue laws of the United States, requiring goods to be invoiced at their actual market value. Rev. Stat. § 2854. It may be assumed that, as the courts of a country will not enforce contracts made abroad in evasion or fraud of its own laws, so they will not enforce a foreign judgment upon such a contract. Armstrong v. Toler, 11 Wheat. 258; De Brimont v. Penniman, 10 Blatchford, 436; Lang v. Holbrook, Crabbe, 179; Story's Conflict of Laws, §§ 244, 246; Wharton's Conflict of Laws, § 656. But as this point does not affect the whole claim in this case, it is sufficient, for present purposes, to say that there does not appear to have been any distinct offer to prove that the invoice value of any of the goods sold by the plaintiffs to the defendants was agreed between them to be, or was, in fact, lower than the actual market value of the goods. It must, however, always be kept in mind that it is the paramount duty of the court, before which any suit is brought, to see to it that the parties have had a fair and impartial trial, before a final decision is rendered against either party. When an action is brought in a court of this country, by a citizen of a foreign country against one of our own citizens, to recover a sum of money adjudged by a court of that country to be due from the defendant to the plaintiff, and the foreign judgment appears to have been rendered by a competent court, having jurisdiction of the cause and of the parties, and upon due allegations and proofs, and opportunity to defend against them, and its proceedings are according to the course of a civilized jurisprudence, and are stated in a clear and formal Opinion of the Court. record, the judgment is prima facie evidence, at least, of the truth of the matter adjudged; and it should be held conclusive upon the merits tried in the foreign court, unless some special ground is shown for impeaching the judgment, as by showing that it was affected by fraud or prejudice, or that, by the principles of international law, and by the comity of our own country, it should not be given full credit and effect. There is no doubt that both in this country, as appears by the authorities already cited, and in England, a foreign judgment may be impeached for fraud. Shortly before the Declaration of Independence, the House of Lords, upon the trial of the Duchess of Kingston for bigamy, put to the judges the question whether — assuming a sentence of the ecclesiastical court against a marriage, in a suit for jactitation of marriage, to be conclusive evidence so as to prevent the counsel for the Crown from proving the marriage upon an indictment for polygamy-"the counsel for the Crown may be admitted to avoid the effect of such sentence, by proving the same to have been obtained by fraud or collusion." Chief Justice De Grey, delivering the opinion of the judges, which was adopted by the House of Lords, answering this question in the affirmative, said: "But if it was a direct and decisive sentence upon the point, and, as it stands, to be admitted as conclusive evidence upon the court, and not to be impeached from within; yet, like all other acts of the highest judicial authority, it is impeachable from without; although it is not permitted to show that the court was mistaken, it may be shown that they were misled. Fraud is an intrinsic collateral act; which vitiates the most solemn proceedings of courts of justice. Lord Coke says, it avoids all judicial acts, ecclesiastical or temporal." 20 Howell's State Trials, 537, 543, note; S. C. in 2 Smith's Lead. Cas. All the subsequent English authorities concur in holding that any foreign judgment, whether in rem or in personam, may be impeached upon the ground that it was fraudulently obtained. White v. Hall, (1806) 12 Ves. 321, 324; Bowles v. Orr, (1835) 1 Yo. & Col. Exch. 464, 473; Price v. Dewhurst, (1837) 8 Sim. 279, 302-305; Don v. Lippmann, (1837) 5 Cl. & Opinion of the Court. Fin. 1, 20; Bank of Australasia v. Nias, (1851) 16 Q. B. 717, 735; Reimers v. Druce, (1856) 23 Beavan, 145, 150; Castrique v. Imrie, (1870) L. R. 4 H. L. 414, 445, 446; Godard v. Gray, (1870) L. R. 6 Q. B. 139, 149; Messina v. Petrococchino, (1872) L. R. 4 P. C. 144, 157; Ochsenbein v. Papelier, (1873) L. R. 8 Ch. 695. Under what circumstances this may be done does not appear to have ever been the subject of judicial investigation in this country. It has often, indeed, been declared by this court that the fraud which entitles a party to impeach the judgment of one of our own tribunals must be fraud extrinsic to the matter tried in the cause, and not merely consist in false and fraudulent documents or testimony submitted to that tribunal, and the truth of which was contested before it and passed upon by it. United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U. S. 61, 65, 66; Vance v. Burbank, 101 U. S. 514, 519; Steel v. Smelting Co., 106 U. S. 447, 453; Moffat v. United States, 112 U. S. 24, 32; United States v. Minor, 114 U. S. 233, 242. And in one English case, where a ship had been sold under a foreign judgment, the like restriction upon impeaching that judgment for fraud was suggested; but the decision was finally put upon the ground that the judicial sale passed the title to the ship. Cammell v. Sewell, (1858-60) 3 H. & N. 617, 646; 5 H. & N. 728, 729, 742. But it is now established in England, by well considered and strongly reasoned decisions of the Court of Appeal, that foreign judgments may be impeached, if procured by false and fraudulent representations and testimony of the plaintiff, even if the same question of fraud was presented to and decided by the foreign court. In Abouloff v. Oppenheimer, (1882) the plaintiff had recovered a judgment at Tiflis in Russia, ordering the defendants to return certain goods or to pay their value. The defendants appealed to a higher Russian court, which confirmed the judgment, and ordered the defendants to pay, besides the sum awarded below, an additional sum for costs and expenses. In an action in the English High Court of Opinion of the Court. Justice upon those judgments, the defendants pleaded that they were obtained by the gross fraud of the plaintiff, in fraudulently representing to the Russian courts that the goods in question were not in her possession when the suit was commenced, and when the judgment was given, and during the whole time the suit was pending; and by fraudulently concealing from those courts the fact that those goods, as the fact was, and as she well knew, were in her actual possession. A demurrer to this plea was overruled, and judgment entered for the defendants. And that judgment was affirmed in the Court of Appeal by Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, Lord Justice Baggallay and Lord Justice Brett, all of whom delivered concurring opinions, the grounds of which sufficiently appear in the opinion delivered by Lord Justice Brett (since Lord Esher, Master of the Rolls), who said: "With regard to an action brought upon a foreign judgment, the whole doctrine as to fraud is English, and is to be applied in an action purely English. I am prepared to hold, according to the judgment of the House of Lords adopting the proposition laid down by De Grey, C. J., that if the judgment upon which the action is brought was procured from the foreign court by the successful fraud of the party who is seeking to enforce it, the action in the English court will not lie. This proposition is absolute and without any limitation, and, as the Lord Chief Justice has pointed out, is founded on the doctrine that no party in an English court shall be able to take advantage of his own wrongful act, or, as it may be stated in other language, that no obligation can be enforced in an English court of justice which has been procured by the fraud of the person relying upon it as an obligation." "I will assume that in the suit in the Russian courts the plaintiff's fraud was alleged by the defendants, and that they gave evidence in support of the charge. I will assume even that the defendants gave the very same evidence which they propose to adduce in this action; nevertheless the defendants will not be debarred at the trial of this action from making the same charge of fraud and from adducing the same evidence in support of it; and if the High Court of Justice is satisfied that the allegations of the defendants are true, and |