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regulate slaughtering within her limits, and to designate places for its lawful conduct, obviously persons complying with such regulations had the right to transact the business. If she had not that right, no person could lawfully slaughter elsewhere than at the old company's slaughter-house."

"But it is claimed that the prosecutor acted under the advice, of counsel learned in the law. That is certainly true, and would ordinarily protect. But here the client was in possession of the opinion of this court on the very point in its own case, involving the same subject-matter. It had no need for advice of counsel. That advice was simply that the opinion of this court was error. Counsel had the undoubted right to entertain such opinion, and so to advise its client; the only lawful remedy under such advice consisted in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. If it chose to act otherwise on such advice, it acted at its peril, and can take no protection therefrom. The only lawful action it could take under such advice had been already taken in the writ of error from the United States Supreme Court.”

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Nor does the decision of the judges of the Circuit Court of the United States afford a better shield. They are not vested with authority to review or reverse the decisions of this court. The effect of their action was not only to overrule our opinion, but practically to reverse our decree. For of what avail was the right decreed by us in favor of the city, to regulate slaughtering and to designate places therefor, if persons complying with those regulations could be enjoined by the United States Circuit Court from conducting the business at such places? It is obvious that the entire subject-matter of the injunction suit was embraced in and disposed of by our decree; and that though the Butchers' Union Company was not nominally a party, its rights and those of all persons to transact the business of slaughtering in this city, being subsidiary to and springing directly from the right of the city, were necessarily involved in and protected by our decree."

"But the ground on which we rest our conclusion on the question of probable cause is, that our decree in the suit, to which the defendant corporation was a party, was, until re

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versed, the law to it so far as the subject-matter thereof is concerned; that the prosecution of a suit which had no foundation, except in the assumption that our decree was not law, was without probable cause; and that neither the advice of counsel, nor the opinion of judges of a coördinate court that our decree was error, could furnish any cause whatever for the prosecution of such suit."

It is conceded by the Supreme Court of Louisiana, in this opinion, that its prior judgment in the case between the plaintiff in error and the city of New Orleans could not operate as an estoppel upon the principle of res judicata, in the suit which the plaintiff in error brought in the Circuit Court of the United States, the prosecution of which is charged against it as being malicious, because it was between different parties. It is also admitted that the judgment was not a final one, but by reason of the Federal question involved was subject to review and possible reversal by a writ of error from the Supreme Court of the United States. The prosecution of such a writ of error, which was in fact actually sued out but subsequently dismissed, is declared by the Supreme Court of Louisiana to be the only lawful course which the plaintiff in error had a right to pursue. The failure to prosecute that writ of error is charged against the plaintiff in error, so as not only to deprive him of the benefit of the defence of probable cause, but as sufficient proof of malice in the subsequent institution of his suit in the Circuit Court of the United States; and these consequences, in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, are not alleviated by the admitted fact that the plaintiff in error acted under the advice of counsel. Notwithstanding such advice, the client itself, the Supreme Court of Louisiana declared, was bound at its peril to take notice of its legal rights as defined in that opinion of the Supreme Court of the state.

It is not shown in the present record on what grounds counsel proceeded in their advice, or the plaintiff in error in failing to prosecute the writ of error from that judgment. It will be observed that the only relief sought in that suit was a writ of injunction against the city of New Orleans from taking the preliminary steps under the ordinances of the city in reference

Opinion of the Court.

to entertaining petitions, and designating places, for the prosecution of the business of which it claimed to have a monopoly under its charter.

In a similar case of the Crescent City Live-Stock Landing and Slaughter-House Company v. The Police Jury, Parish of Jefferson, Right Bank, decided by the Supreme Court of Louisiana, 32 La. Ann. 1192, the plaintiff, who is the plaintiff in error herein, sought to enjoin the defendant from granting permission to any one to establish a slaughter-house in the parish of Jefferson, on the ground that such a grant of authority would be in violation of the exclusive rights given to it under its charter; a case precisely analogous to that between the plaintiff in error and the city of New Orleans, 33 La. Ann. 934. In the case against the Police Jury of Jefferson Parish, the appeal and the petition of the plaintiff were dismissed. In disposing of the case, the court say, p. 1196: "The averments of the petition disclose a clear case of prematurity of complaint. It will be time enough for the plaintiff to apply for an injunction upon a sworn averment of proper facts if, after the police jury will have passed the resolution or given the permission, some party assumes to act upon that resolution and permission. For the determination of the motion to dismiss an opinion necessarily had to be expressed, not upon the merits, for none as yet exist, but upon the sufficiency of the sworn averment to justify the injunction."

It might, therefore, on the authority of this decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, be argued that the expression of its opinion in the case of The Crescent City Slaughter-House Company v. The City of New Orleans, 33 La. Ann. 934, was unnecessary to the decision of the cause, and obiter dictum, and for aught that appears counsel may have advised that a writ of error to reverse that judgment in the Supreme Court of the United States would fail on the ground that the record did not disclose the existence of a Federal question necessarily to be passed on; for it has been the uniform doctrine of this court that, where it appears that the judgment of the state court must be affirmed on other grounds disclosed in the record, it will not be reversed for an erroneous ruling of the state

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court on a Federal question not necessary to the decision of the cause. Murdock v. City of Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 634; Jenkins v. Loewenthal, 110 U. S. 222; Erwin v. Lowry, 7 How. 172; Gibson v. Chouteau, 8 Wall. 314.

However that may be, we are of the opinion, on other grounds, that the Supreme Court of Louisiana in this case erred in not giving due effect to the decree in question of the Circuit Court of the United States. The latter is a court coördinate to the Supreme Court of Louisiana in authority, and equal in dignity, being the highest Federal court sitting in that state, whose judgments and decrees are final and conclusive, subject only to review and reversal in the Supreme Court of the United States. In the case in which the decree complained of was pronounced the Circuit Court did not act without jurisdiction, the subject-matter of the suit being a controversy arising under the Constitution of the United States. The argument of the counsel for the defendant in error to the contrary, which deduces what the judge of the inferior court in his charge to the jury alleged to be a usurpation of jurisdiction, merely from the fact that its decree was reversed by this court, could only be true if the general proposition were true that all judgments reversible for error are void for want of jurisdiction. Having jurisdiction of the parties and of the subject-matter of the suit, the judges of the Circuit Court were bound to declare the law of the case between the parties in the light of their own convictions, and under a sense of their official responsibilities, not being under any legal obligation to regard the decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana upon a question of Federal law as controlling by reason of its authority, whatever respect and deference they might see fit to accord to it by way of persuasion and argument. And their judgment or decree when rendered is binding and perfect between the parties until reversed, without regard to any adverse opinion or judgment of any other court of merely concurrent jurisdiction. Its integrity, its validity, and its effect are complete in all respects between all parties in every suit and in every forum where it is legiti mately produced as the foundation of an action, or of a

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defence, either by plea or in proof, as it would be in any other circumstances. While it remains in force it determines the rights of the parties between themselves, and may be carried into execution in due course of law to its full extent, furnishing a complete protection to all who act in compliance with its mandate, and even after reversal it still remains, as in the case of every other judgment or decree in like circumstances, sufficient evidence in favor of the plaintiff who instituted the suit or action in which it is rendered, when sued for a malicious prosecution, that he had probable cause for his proceeding.

Neither was there anything in the situation or conduct of the plaintiff in error that could deprive it of the protection of the decree of the Circuit Court of the United States in this action. The fact that it had exercised an election to bring its suit against the city of New Orleans in the state court could have no legal effect upon its right afterwards to bring a similar suit against other parties in the Circuit Court of the United States. Its right of choice was not exhausted by a 'single exercise, and justified it in subsequently invoking the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, no matter with what motive or for what purpose. As we have already seen and declared, the existence of express malice, however flagrant or unjustifiable, could not affect the exercise of this right, or deprive the party of the benefit of the judgment of the court as proof of a probable cause for the institution of the su.t. Neither was the plaintiff in error bound to reject the advice of its counsel on the ground of its own presumed knowledge of the law, as declared in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in the prior suit. It had a right to test the soundness of that judgment by seeking the jurisdiction of a coördinate court, whose decision would be of equal authority and dignity with that of the Supreme Court of the State, both being final between the parties to the particular litigation until reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States. The plaintiff in error owed no allegiance to the courts of the state greater than that due to the courts of the United States; it had an equal right in both to vindicate what it claimed to