802
Opinion of the Court
by suing in his official capacity, the finance director intended to represent the pecuniary interests of all city taxpayers, and not simply the corporate interests of the city itself, he did not purport to represent the pecuniary interests of county taxpayers like petitioners.6
As a result, there is no reason to suppose that the Bedingfield court took care to protect the interests of petitioners in the manner suggested in Hansberry. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the individual taxpayers in Bedingfield understood their suit to be on behalf of absent county taxpayers. Thus, to contend that the plaintiffs in Bedingfield somehow represented petitioners, let alone represented them in a constitutionally adequate manner, would be "to attribute to them a power that it cannot be said that they had assumed to exercise." Hansberry, 311 U. S., at 46.
Because petitioners and the Bedingfield litigants are best described as mere "strangers" to one another, Martin v. Wilks, 490 U. S., at 762, we are unable to conclude that the Bedingfield plaintiffs provided representation sufficient to make up for the fact that petitioners neither participated in, see Montana v. United States, 440 U. S. 147, 154 (1979), nor had the opportunity to participate in, the Bedingfield action. Accordingly, due process prevents the former from being bound by the latter's judgment.
IV
Respondents contend that, even if petitioners did not receive the kind of opportunity to make their case in court that due process would ordinarily ensure, the character of their
6 We need not decide here whether public officials are always constitutionally adequate representatives of all persons over whom they have jurisdiction when, as here, the underlying right is personal in nature. Cf. Lockport v. Citizens for Community Action at Local Level, Inc., 430 U. S. 259, 263, n. 7 (1977) (voting rights challenge by county residents not barred by county's prior suit); 18 C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4458, p. 518 (1981); infra, at 803-805.
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