Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940) is a famous case now usually known in civil procedure for teaching that res judicata may not bind a subquent plaintiff who had no opportunity to be represented in the earlier civil action. The facts of the case dealt with a racially restrictive covenant amongst members of a class which would have called for excluding Carl Hansberry, the father of famous author Lorraine Hansberry, merely because people both believed in the biologically discredited theory of race and according to that theory, that he was black. The defendants asserted that since Hansberry was a class member, he should be bound by the prior decision. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone held that since he didn't have an opportunity to be heard, enforcing that racial covenant would deny him his due process rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Civil procedure is the body of law that sets out the process that courts will follow when hearing cases of a civil nature (a civil action). These rules govern how a lawsuit or case may be commenced, what kind of service of process is required, the types of pleadings or... Res judicata (from res iudicata, Latin for a thing decided), more commonly res judicata in legal usage, is a common law doctrine meant to bar relitigation of cases between the same parties in court. ... A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in order to recover a right, obtain damages for an injury, obtain an injunction to prevent an injury, or obtain a declaratory judgment to prevent future legal disputes. ... A restrictive covenant is a legal obligation imposed in a deed by the seller upon the buyer of real estate to do or not to do something. ... Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and painter. ... In law, a class action is an equitable procedural device used in litigation for determining the rights of and remedies, if any, for large numbers of people whose cases involve common questions of law and fact. ... Harlan Fiske Stone (October 11, 1872 – April 22, 1946) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as the dean of Columbia Law School, Attorney General of the United States, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and later Chief Justice of the United States. ... In United States law, due process (more fully due process of law) is the principle that the government must respect all of a persons legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. ... The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the post-Civil War amendments and it includes the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. ...

Later, the type of real property restriction, racially restrictive covenants, was held by Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), to be state action because the plaintiffs seeking to enforce such a covenant was invoking the machinery of the state. A restrictive covenant is a legal obligation imposed in a deed by the seller upon the buyer of real estate to do or not to do something. ... Shelley v. ... A state actor is a term used in United States civil rights law to describe a person who is acting on behalf of a governmental body, and is therefore subject to regulation under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from violating the rights...