Tuesday, May 04, 2004

It has long been the law that a plaintiff in federal court can seek to set aside a state court judgment obtained through extrinsic fraud. In Barrow v. Hunton, 99 U.S. (9 Otto) 80, 99 U.S. 80, 25 L. Ed. 407 (1878), the Supreme Court distinguished between errors by the state court, which could not be reviewed in federal circuit court, and fraud on the state court, which could be the basis for an independent suit in circuit court. (The federal circuit court was [*13] a trial court at that time.) Anticipating the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the Court wrote:
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