WILKERSON v. GALBREATH

WILKERSON v. GALBREATH
1924 OK 1070
232 P. 21
107 Okla. 227
Case Number: 15345
Decided: 11/25/1924
Supreme Court of Oklahoma

WILKERSON
v.
GALBREATH.

Syllabus

¶0 Judgment--Res Judicata--Habeas Corpus. Where the rights of conflicting claimants to the custody of a child are involved and determined in habeas corpus proceedings, the judgment is binding and conclusive, and bars subsequent proceedings by a party thereto upon the same state of facts.

Cress & Tebbe, for plaintiff in error.
Clark & Armstrong, Prentiss E. Rowe, and Henry S. Johnston, for defendant in error.

PER CURIAM.

¶1 This appeal is from the order and judgment of the county court of Noble county in a habeas corpus proceeding to determine the right to the custody of Leasel Ralph Galbreath, a minor. Plaintiff in error, petitioner below, is the infant's maternal grandmother. Defendant in error, respondent below, is the father of the child. The child, a boy, is now about eight years of age and was in the care and custody of this grandmother from the death of his own mother in 1919, until July, 1923, when defendant in error secretly obtained possession of the child. Petitioner alleged in her petition for writ of habeas corpus that during the time she had the child in her possession, respondent brought two habeas corpus proceedings in the district court of Pawnee county to secure custody of the infant, both of which resulted in orders unappealed from denying the writ and awarding custody of the child to petitioner. The order in the first of these proceedings was entered in January, 1922. The order in the last case awarding custody of the child to plaintiff in error was made September 5, 1922. It was the contention of plaintiff in error in the trial court, and is the sole proposition in her brief on appeal, that the orders of the district court of Pawnee county determining the right to the custody of the child were final orders review able in the Supreme Court, and that no appeal having been taken therefrom, such orders are binding and conclusive and bar a subsequent proceeding by the parties thereto upon the same facts. This seems to be the settled law in this state. Jamison v. Gilbert, 38 Okla. 751, 135 P. 342; Hedtke v. Kukuk, 93 Okla. 264, 220 P. 615. In Jamison v. Gilbert, supra, it is said: