After discovering that a letter attributed to her, used as evidence against her at trial, had been forged, she filed a petition for a bill of review in the Southern District of New York seeking to enjoin the respondent from endorsing the verdict.

In 1884 David Mayer, an agricultural supplier, brought suit against Sarah Marshall, owner of the Cabin Teele cotton plantation in Madison Parish, Louisiana, and 24 of her tenants, alleging nonpayment for products advanced to them.

[2] Marshall learned of the forged letter later but the state Supreme Court declined the case in 1887 as the amount in controversy in each judgement was too small for it to assert jurisdiction.

Since the forged letter had made the difference at trial, "The case ... is one where, without negligence, laches or other fault upon the part of petitioner, Mayer has fraudulently obtained judgments which he seeks, against conscience, to enforce by execution."

"[12] Among the precedents Harlan's opinion cited was United States v. Throckmorton, an 1878 case in which a similarly unanimous court, including him, had declined to allow the government to reopen a 20-year-old California land claim allegedly secured through falsified documents and perjured affidavits.

Justice Samuel Freeman Miller's opinion had drawn on the decisions of English courts dating to 1702 to delineate a distinction between intrinsic fraud, consisting of evidence heard during the original proceeding and considered non-reviewable, and extrinsic fraud, occurrences outside the proceeding that prevented the losing party from fully and fairly presenting their case, which could lead to equitable relief.

[15][16] As Marshall was working its way through the appellate courts, an Illinois man named Graver was solicited by an Ohio banker acquaintance, Faurot, to invest in a company he recommended.

[18] Graver filed a bill of review in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois seeking to have the earlier dismissal set aside.

As part of the record, the Seventh Circuit had submitted the entire case, which, Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote, put the Supreme Court in a difficult position.

"[23] The petitioner in Simon v. Southern Railway Co. had obtained a judgement in Louisiana state court against the respondent, a Virginia company, for injuries allegedly suffered in a train accident with fraudulent evidence but without notice to them of the proceedings.

[27] In the 1998 case United States v. Beggerly, the federal government appealed the Fifth Circuit's holding in favor of a family who, after having learned that records in the National Archives showed an ancestor of theirs had received a grant of part of Mississippi's Horn Island from the Spanish governor of Louisiana, sued to set aside the quiet title proceedings by which Gulf Islands National Seashore had been created.

In denying a motion to vacate a naturalization obtained through alleged misrepresentation, Judge Emile Henry Lacombe noted that in another recent case which turned on the same issue,[30] after the circuit had cited Throckmorton without writing an opinion to uphold the district court's denial of review, the appellant twice petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari, both times with briefs citing the unresolved issues between the two cases, and was denied both times.

[31] "Until the attention of this court is called to some decision of the Supreme Court," Lacombe wrote, "other than Holmes v. Marshall, criticising or limiting the doctrine of U.S. v. Throckmorton, it would seem that the principle of stare decisis should preclude its entertaining a bill which seeks to vacate or annul a judgment solely on the ground that such judgment was procured by means of the perjured testimony of the party whom it benefits.

"[32][a] In American Bakeries Co. v. Vining, Judge Halsted L. Ritter of the Southern District of Florida was asked in 1935 by the petitioner to set aside a state court verdict in favor of the respondent over injuries suffered in a motor vehicle accident, where one witness admitted to having perjured themselves and others were suspected of doing so.

[34] Since Graver had left the apparent overlap between the two cases unresolved, Ritter decided on Throckmorton as the more controlling precedent, since its general rule was also quoted in Marshall.

The petitioner appealed a judgement against him that had vacated a finding during a foreclosure proceeding two years prior where he had represented himself as nearly destitute to pay off the balance of the defaulted mortgage; his friends covered it at a penny on the dollar.

[15] The circuit had initially remanded with the goal of a full trial on the facts as well as the law, but Publicker retained new counsel that sought to try the matter purely on Throckmorton as a test case.

He again quoted at length a Columbia Law Review article taking note of the "hazy region of uncertainty" between Throckmorton and Marshall, saying that as long as courts are free to pick and choose between them, "there will be no federal rule at all."

Calling Marshall the "more salutary" of the two, Clark wrote for himself and his colleagues that the district court would be upheld as "[w]e believe truth is more important than the trouble it takes to get it.

[39] In 1944, the Supreme Court revisited the intrinsic-extrinsic fraud distinction it had created in Throckmorton with Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., a patent infringement case where it had been discovered some years later that an apparently impartial journal article used by respondent during its successful appeal had in fact been written by its own lawyers for another person to sign.

[40] Since Justice Hugo Black's majority opinion had twice cited Marshall, commentators wondered if the Court was signaling that that case, not Throckmorton, now controlled.

The respondent alleged that perjured testimony on behalf of the petitioner at an earlier interference proceeding had tainted the result, and argued that Hazel-Atlas had made Marshall controlling.

[42] In 1972 Judge José Victor Toledo of the District of Puerto Rico weighed in on the relationship between Throckmorton and Marshall when considering In re de Manati, a bankruptcy case where a debtor sought to have a local court's judgement overturned on the grounds it was obtained through misrepresentation of interest by a creditor.

He also believed that Marshall was only applicable in situations where removal was an issue, "which circumstance may have justified Mr. Justice Harlan's language and his overpassing Throckmorton sub silentio".

[16][44] The Wisconsin Supreme Court considered Boring v. Ott in 1909, in which the petitioner, executor of an estate, alleged that the respondent had 10 years prior misrepresented a contract between himself and the decedent as in force at the time of his death in order to claim a share of a business the latter owned.

Justice James C. Kerwin wrote for a majority of six that while Throckmorton''s rule was generally a good one, it was problematic for lower courts in that it did not define extrinsic fraud clearly enough, and even if it had it left issues unresolved.

"It would seem that a judgement thus obtained is as unconscionable as one secured by keeping a party away from court or by other corrupt means, and thereby preventing a fair trial on the merits."

[45] While the court ultimately denied relief on factual grounds, dissenting justice Roujet D. Marshall said it need not have gone that far as Throckmorton was sufficiently controlling.

If the Court had considered Throckmorton at all, Justice Marshall speculated, it was to decide that the use of forged documents was extrinsic fraud and thus fit for relief.

Judge J. Dudley Digges wrote for a court that unanimously rejected the idea: The law of Maryland is too well settled for us to overrule it in a decision such as this.