Baker v. General Motors Corp., 522 U.S. 222, 3 (1998)

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224

BAKER v. GENERAL MOTORS CORP.

Syllabus

and credit, however, does not mean that enforcement measures must travel with the sister state judgment as preclusive effects do; such measures remain subject to the evenhanded control of forum law. See McElmoyle ex rel. Bailey v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 325. Orders commanding action or inaction have been denied enforcement in a sister State when they purported to accomplish an official act within the exclusive province of that other State or interfered with litigation over which the ordering State had no authority. See, e. g., Fall v. Eastin, 215 U. S. 1. Pp. 231-236. (b) With these background principles in view, this Court turns to the dimensions of the order GM relies upon to stop Elwell's testimony and asks: What matters did the Michigan injunction legitimately conclude? Although the Michigan order is claim preclusive between Elwell and GM, Michigan's judgment cannot reach beyond the Elwell-GM controversy to control proceedings against GM brought in other States, by other parties, asserting claims the merits of which Michigan has not considered. Michigan has no power over those parties, and no basis for commanding them to become intervenors in the Elwell-GM dispute. See Martin v. Wilks, 490 U. S. 755, 761-763. Most essentially, although Michigan's decree could operate against Elwell to preclude him from volunteering his testimony in another jurisdiction, a Michigan court cannot, by entering the injunction to which Elwell and GM stipulated, dictate to a court in another jurisdiction that evidence relevant in the Bakers' case—a controversy to which Michigan is foreign—shall be inadmissible. This conclusion creates no general exception to the full faith and credit command, and surely does not permit a State to refuse to honor a sister state judgment based on the forum's choice of law or policy preferences. This Court simply recognizes, however, that, just as the mechanisms for enforcing a judgment do not travel with the judgment itself for purposes of full faith and credit, and just as one State's judgment cannot automatically transfer title to land in another State, similarly the Michigan decree cannot determine evidentiary issues in a lawsuit brought by parties who were not subject to the jurisdiction of the Michigan court. Cf. United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 710. The language of the consent decree, excluding from its scope the then-pending Georgia action, is informative. If the Michigan order would have interfered with the Georgia court's jurisdiction, Michigan's ban would, in the same way, interfere with the jurisdiction of courts in other States in similar cases. GM recognized the interference potential of the consent decree by agreeing not to institute contempt or breach-of-contract proceedings against Elwell for giving subpoenaed testimony elsewhere. That GM ruled out resort to the court that entered the

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