UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE

Upon the record in this case, the question whether the lands of the plaintiffs in error were taxable is not a federal question, but is one on which clubjuris

Page 123 U. S. 528

the decision of the highest court of the Iowa is conclusive, and it is not reviewable here.

Homestead Company v. Valley Railroad, 17 Wall. 153, is a judicial precedent which might have been referred to as a reason for holding that taxes paid, under the circumstances in which the payments of taxes in contention in these snits were made, cannot be recovered by the party paying them from the true owners of the land; but it is no bar as an estoppel to the recovery in these cases.

The judgment of this Court in Wolcott v. Des Moines Company, 5 Wall. 681, while it may be referred to by the parties in this suit as a judicial precedent, does not operate as an estoppel against the defendant in error.

The filing of a brief in a suit by a person interested in the question to be decided, but not a party to the suit, does not estop him in a suit of his own from presenting the same question.

In equity in a state court of Iowa to recover from the plaintiffs in error, defendants below, sums of money alleged to have been paid by defendant in error on lands in Iowa adjudged to be the property of the plaintiffs in error, and also to leave the several amounts of the taxes decreed to be special liens on the lands. Decrees awarding the relief asked for by the plaintiff below, to review which these writs of error were sued out. The case, and what was claimed to make the federal question are stated in the opinion.