800
Opinion of the Court
Supreme Court concluded, were adequately represented in Bedingfield.5
Our answer is informed by our decision in Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U. S., at 40-41. There, certain property owners brought suit to enforce a restrictive covenant that purported to forbid the sale or lease of any property within a defined area to "any person of the colored race." Id., at 37-38. By its terms the covenant was not effective unless signed by the owners of 95 per cent of frontage in the area. At trial, the defendants proved that the signers of the covenant owned only about 54 percent of the frontage. Nevertheless, the trial court held that the covenant was enforceable because the issue had been resolved in a prior suit in which the parties had stipulated that the owners of 95 percent had signed. Id., at 38 (referring to Burke v. Kleiman, 277 Ill. App. 519 (1934)).
Despite the fact that the stipulation was untrue, the Illinois Supreme Court held that the second action was barred by res judicata. See Lee v. Hansberry, 372 Ill. 369, 24 N. E. 2d 37 (1939). Because the plaintiff in the earlier case had alleged that she was proceeding "on behalf of herself and on behalf of all other property owners in the district," id., at 372, 24 N. E. 2d, at 39, the Illinois Supreme Court concluded that all members of that "class," including the defendants challenging the stipulation in the present action, were bound by the decree. We reversed.
We recognized the "familiar doctrine . . . that members of a class not present as parties to the litigation may be bound by the judgment where they are in fact adequately repre-5 Of course, mere notice may not suffice to preserve one's right to be heard in a case such as the one before us. The general rule is that "[t]he law does not impose upon any person absolutely entitled to a hearing the burden of voluntary intervention in a suit to which he is a stranger." Chase Nat. Bank v. Norwalk, 291 U. S. 431, 441 (1934); but cf. Penn-Central Merger and N & W Inclusion Cases, 389 U. S. 486, 505, n. 4 (1968) (noting that absent parties were invited to intervene by the court).
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007