Hansberry v. Lee

Facts

Defendants, a black family, bought a house in an area of Chicago allegedly covered by a racially restrictive covenant. Plaintiff brought an action in Illinois state court to enjoin breach of the covenant, naming as defendants both the Defendant’s, and the people from whom the Defendant’s had bought the property. Plaintiff referred the court to an earlier suit to enforce the same covenant. In that case a property owner had sued four individuals in violation of the covenant, and the Illinois court upheld the covenant. The Supreme Court of Illinois in this case determined that the earlier case had been a class action, that Defendants were members of the class of plaintiffs in the earlier case, and that there were therefore bound by the findings in the previous action. It is one thing to say that some members of a class may represent other members in a litigation where the sole and common interest of the class in the litigation, is either to assert a common right or to challenge an asserted obligation. It is quite another to hold that all those who are free alternatively to either assert rights or to challenge them are of a single class, so that any group, merely because it is of the class so constituted, may be deemed adequately to represent any others of the class in litigating their interests in either alternative.