Cite as: 524 U. S. 38 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
Such a case was Marshall v. Holmes, 141 U. S. 589 (1891), in which the plaintiff alleged that judgment had been taken against her in the underlying action as a result of a forged document. The Court said:
"According to the averments of the original petition for injunction . . . the judgments in question would not have been rendered against Mrs. Marshall but for the use in evidence of the letter alleged to be forged. The case evidently intended to be presented by the petition is one where, without negligence, laches or other fault upon the part of petitioner, [respondent] has fraudulently obtained judgments which he seeks, against conscience, to enforce by execution." Id., at 596.
The sense of these expressions is that, under the Rule, an independent action should be available only to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice. In this case, it should be obvious that respondents' allegations do not nearly approach this demanding standard. Respondents allege only that the United States failed to "thoroughly search its records and make full disclosure to the Court" regarding the Boudreau grant. App. 23. Whether such a claim might succeed under Rule 60(b)(3), we need not now decide; it surely would work no "grave miscarriage of justice," and perhaps no miscarriage of justice at all, to allow the judgment to stand. We therefore hold that the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that this was a sufficient basis to justify the reopening of the judgment in the Adams litigation.4
The Court of Appeals did not, however, merely reopen the Adams litigation. It also directed the District Court to quiet title to the property in respondents' favor. The Court of Appeals believed that the QTA, 28 U. S. C. § 2409a, provided jurisdiction to do this. The QTA permits "plaintiffs
4 We therefore need not address the additional requirement that evidence of the Boudreau grant would have changed the outcome of the original action. See, e. g., Pickford v. Talbott, 225 U. S. 651, 657 (1912).
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