to was intended to make effective the result of the proceedings instituted in France, which had been commenced in order to remove the cloud upon the title of the Laportes resulting from the contract of sale made to de Fleurian and the mortgage made by him to Labastide. As the judgment of the court of first instance reciting the facts referred to was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Porto Rico, we may properly assume that the Porto Rican courts did not consider that they were passing upon a merely moot question, but were of opinion that the adjudication made inured to the benefit of the vendees of the nominal complainants, such vendees being the real owners. It being then competent, under the Spanish law, for the vendors of property, after parting with title, to conduct in their own names for the benefit of their vendees a litigation having for its object ultimate relief such as was sought in the action so instituted by the Laporte heirs in 1887, we are of opinion that there is no merit in the contention upon which plaintiffs in error rely in assailing the sufficiency of the defense set up in the third paragraph of the answer. In effect, that contention simply was that as the original owners had sold the property before the institution of the action commenced in 1887 the defendants herein, as claimants under purchasers who had bought from the Laportes before the commencement of that action, are not in privity with the complainants in that suit, as they were mere strangers to the litigation and not entitled to enjoy the benefit of the adjudication. Let it be conceded, for the sake of argument, that ordinarily no one is privy to a judgment whose succession to the rights of property thereby affected occurred previously to the institution of the suit (Dull v. Blackman, 169 U. S. 248; Freeman on Judgments, 1st ed., § 162), nevertheless the rule has no application to a case like this where the nominal plaintiffs or complainants were in legal intendment conducting the litigation under the direction and for the benefit of the real owners of the property. The persons for whose benefit, to the knowledge of the court and of all the parties

to the record, litigation is being conducted cannot, in a legal sense, be said to be strangers to the cause. The case is within the principle that one who prosecutes or defends a suit in the name of another to establish and protect his own right, or who assists in the prosecution or defense of an action in aid of some interest of his own, and who does this openly to the knowledge of the opposing party, is as much bound by the judgment and as fully entitled to avail himself of it as an estoppel against an adverse party, as he would be if he had been a party to the record. Lovejoy v. Murray, 3 Wall. 1.

There is no merit in the contention that in rendering judgment upon the pleadings the court usurped the province of the jury. In the view we have taken of the case it becomes necessary, for the purpose of testing that contention, to consider only the fourth paragraph of the replication, heretofore quoted. In asserting, as was done in that paragraph, “that the defendants herein were neither parties nor prives to the said judgments, suit and appeals (referred to in the third defense), and therefore said judgments cannot bar this action," there was presented merely a question of law as to whether, upon the facts appearing in the judgments or averred in the third defense, the defendants in this action were, as a matter of law, in privity with the complainants in the cause in which the judgments pleaded as res judicata were rendered. And this is true also as to the charge made in the fourth paragraph of the replication that de Fleurian was insane when the judgments relied upon as res judicata were entered. We say this because clearly whether the judgments on such mere averment were subject to be collaterally attacked was a matter of law for the court, even if the assumption be indulged in that the right to plead the asserted insanity, which we do not intimate to be the case, was within the condition as to replying imposed by the court when it overruled the demurrer.

Affirmed.

Opinion of the Court.

217 U. S

OWEN v. DUDLEY & MICHENER.

ERROR TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE DISTRICT OF CO

LUMBIA.

No. 142. Argued April 7, 8, 1910.-Decided May 16, 1910.

In this case a contract made by the attorney of record with associate counsel for professional services to be paid out of fees in an Indian litigation in the Court of Claims construed; and, although the contract provided that in case the fees were not provided for by legis lation but had to be proved each party should prove his fee independently, held, that as the attorney of record had collected without legislation the entire fee originally contemplated and allowable he must account for the amount so collected by him and pay the associate counsel the amount agreed under the contract.

31 App. D. C. 177, affirmed.

THE facts, which involve the construction of a contract for legal fees, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. William H. Robeson for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Samuel A. Putman and Mr. Charles Poe for defendants in error.

MR. JUSTICE MCKENNA delivered the opinion of the court.

This action was brought in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia by defendants in error against plaintiff in error to recover the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000), alleged to be due on account of the following contract entered into by the parties:

"This memorandum of agreement witnesses: That John Vaile, Esq., of Fort Smith, Ark., having been employed by the Eastern Cherokee Council of the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, under contract of February and April, 1900, and ratified a third time by that council of September 4, 1901;

"And whereas, the said John Vaile has employed the services of Robert L. Owen, of Muscogee, Indian Territory, under his aforesaid contracts:

"Now, therefore, the premises considered, the said Owen hereby contracts and agrees to convey to W. W. Dudley and L. T. Michener, partners of the firm of Dudley & Michener, the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) out of the fee so pledged to the said Owen, immediately upon the collection, or in the exact proportion as the said fees may be collected, it being understood and agreed that this contract is conditioned upon the collection of the fees aforesaid. And in the contingency of the said fees not being provided for by legislation, as per the contract of the Eastern Cherokee Council aforesaid, but upon proof of services, then, and in that event, each of the parties hereto shall prove service independently of the other, and said Owen shall not be expected, out of fees collected for his personal service, to pay the fee to the said Dudley & Michener, but it is understood and agreed that he will, in such a contingency, do what he can to assist Dudley & Michener to collect the fee hereby contracted by them.

"The said Dudley & Michener, on their part, agree to give their co-operation in the collection of the money due the Eastern Cherokees and to assist the said Owen as associate counsel in this case..

"Witness our hands and seals in duplicate on this 28th day of May, 1902.

The question in the case turns upon the construction of the following provision of the contract: "And in the contingency of the fees not being provided for by legislation, as per the contract of the Eastern Cherokee Council aforesaid, but upon proof of services, then, and in that event, each of the parties hereto shall prove service independently of the other, and said Owen shall not be expected out of fees collected for his

personal service to pay the fees to the said Dudley and Michener, but it is understood and agreed that he will, in such a contingency, do what he can to assist Dudley and Michener to collect the fees hereby contracted by them." Certain facts were found by the trial court as helping to clear up, with the statute law then existing, the ambiguity of the provision. That court deduced from them a meaning favorable to plaintiff in error. The Court of Appeals found in them evidence of a different meaning and reversed the judgment of the trial court. The facts found, in addition to the agreement, are as follows:

"On March 20, 1905, the Court of Claims rendered a judgment in the case of the Eastern Cherokees against the United States. On April 17, 1905, the defendant, Owen, addressed the following letter to the plaintiffs:

"The Southern, 'St. Louis, April 17, 1905.

'Dudley & Michener, Washington, D. C.

'Gentlemen: I expect to be at Riggs House about April 28th, 1905, and wish by that time you would make up a careful affidavit of services rendered in case under contract of May 28, '02, as I am preparing decree and wish to protect your fee. 'Yours truly, R. L. OWEN.'

"A few days thereafter the plaintiff Michener met the defendant, and was told by him that he had abandoned the purpose to make application for fees at that time and would postpone said application until after the Supreme Court of the United States, to which the said case was to be appealed, had acted thereon, and the application was so postponed by the defendant Owen. The judgment of the Court of Claims was affirmed by the Supreme Court with a slight modification. After the return of the mandate of the Supreme Court to the Court of Claims the defendant Owen, who was one of the attorneys of record in the case in the Court of Claims, together with his co-attorney of record, R. V. Belt, made an applica