United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 20-2030

MARÍA DOLORES MALDONADO-CABRERA ET AL.,

Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.

DR. JORGE ANGLERO-ALFARO ET AL.,

Defendants, Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Raúl M. Arias-Marxuach, U.S. District Judge] 

Before

Howard, Chief Judge,

Selya and Barron, Circuit Judges.

Michelle Annet Ramos-Jimenez on brief for appellants.

Fernando Figueroa-Santiago, Solicitor General of Puerto Rico, 

and Omar Andino-Figueroa, Deputy Solicitor General, on brief for 

appellee Dr. Bryan Santiago-Díaz.

February 25, 2022
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SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us to examine 

the framework governing a stay or dismissal of a federal action 

that is duplicative of parallel state litigation. Because the 

court below erroneously applied the "prior pending action" 

doctrine in lieu of the test adumbrated in Colorado River Water 

Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800 (1976), and 

its progeny, we vacate the order dismissing the plaintiffs' action 

and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 

I

We start by chronicling the travel of the case. On 

September 6, 2018, the plaintiffs, María Dolores Maldonado-Cabrera 

and Annelys Maldonado-Cabrera, commenced this civil action, 

seeking damages for medical malpractice, in the United States 

District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. They premised 

federal jurisdiction on diversity of citizenship and the existence 

of a controversy in the requisite amount. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).1 

Their complaint alleged negligence under Puerto Rico law leading

to the death of their mother, Gregoria Cabrera-Bayanilla, during

the previous year. They named as defendants the physicians who 

cared for the decedent, the hospital in which she was a patient, 

and two insurance companies (who are no longer parties). 

1 The plaintiffs are citizens of Florida. All of the 

defendants are citizens of Puerto Rico. The amount in controversy 

exceeds $75,000.
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Roughly a month before the plaintiffs instituted this 

action, a larger group of plaintiffs (also relatives of the 

decedent) brought a similar medical malpractice suit in the 

Superior Court of Puerto Rico, sitting at Ponce. This earlier 

suit also arose from Mrs. Cabrera-Bayanilla's death, asserted 

similar causes of action, and named the same defendants. The 

earlier action was captioned Luis Alberto Maldonado Cabrera y Otros

v. Hospital Episcopal San Lucas y Otros, No. PO2018CV00625.

In due course, Dr. Bryan Santiago-Díaz — who was a 

defendant in both cases — filed a motion in the federal court 

seeking either to stay or dismiss the federal-court proceeding. 

As relevant here, Santiago-Díaz's motion — docketed on February 

21, 2020 — asked the district court to act based upon either 

Colorado River abstention or the "prior pending action" doctrine. 

Although expressing doubt that either staying or 

dismissing the federal-court proceeding was called for under 

Colorado River, the district court concluded that it "need not 

consider [the] request for abstention under Colorado River" 

because the prior pending action doctrine applied. MaldonadoCabrera v. Alfaro, No. 18-1661, 2020 WL 6047748, at *2, (D.P.R. 

Oct. 13, 2020). That doctrine, as the court understood it, 

provided that "the pendency of [a] prior action, in a court of 

competent jurisdiction, between the same parties, predicated upon 

the same cause of action and growing out of the same transaction, 
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and in which identical relief is sought, constitutes good ground 

for abatement of the later suit." Id. (quoting Rowayton Venture 

Grp. LLC v. McCarthy, No. 19-12240, 2020 WL 4340985, at *3 (D. 

Mass. July 28, 2020)). The court proceeded to find the prior 

pending action doctrine applicable and dismissed the federal-court 

suit without prejudice. Id. at *5. This timely appeal followed.

II

When a district court has yielded jurisdiction in favor 

of a prior pending federal-court action, we review its order of 

dismissal for abuse of discretion. See Curtis v. Citibank, N.A., 

226 F.3d 133, 138 (2d Cir. 2000). Here, however, the parties have 

been unable to find any relevant authority identifying the standard 

of review that obtains when a federal court has yielded

jurisdiction in favor of a prior pending state-court action.2

The closest parallel, we think, is that we review a 

district court's decision to abstain under Colorado River for abuse 

of discretion. See United States v. Fairway Cap. Corp., 483 F.3d 

34, 40 (1st Cir. 2007). We apply that standard of review here. 

In doing so, we remain mindful that a material error of law is 

2 To be sure, Puerto Rico is not a state. The law is clear, 

though, that cases pending in the Puerto Rico courts are treated 

as functionally equivalent to state-court cases for purposes of 

Colorado River abstention. See, e.g., Nazario-Lugo v. 

Caribevisión Holdings, Inc., 670 F.3d 109, 114 (1st Cir. 2012); 

Jiménez v. Rodríguez-Pagán, 597 F.3d 18, 27 (1st Cir. 2010). 

Consequently, we refer throughout to the suit that is pending in 

the Superior Court as a state-court suit.
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perforce an abuse of discretion. See Charbono v. Sumski (In re 

Charbono), 790 F.3d 80, 85 (1st Cir. 2015); United States v. 

Caraballo, 552 F.3d 6, 8 (1st Cir. 2008). Thus, a court abuses 

its discretion if it fails to apply the Colorado River standard 

when that precedent supplies the relevant benchmark. See Moses H. 

Cone Mem'l Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 19 (1983). 

The prior pending action doctrine is good law where it 

belongs, but it does not belong here. It covers scenarios in which 

"actions involving the same parties and similar subject matter are 

pending in different federal district courts" and "the overlap 

between the two suits is nearly complete." TPM Holdings, Inc. v. 

Intra-Gold Indus., Inc., 91 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 1996). When such 

a scenario looms, we have made pellucid that "the usual practice 

is for the court that first had jurisdiction to resolve the issues 

and the other court to defer."3 Id. This "power to dismiss a 

duplicative lawsuit is meant to foster judicial economy and the 

'comprehensive disposition of litigation.'" Curtis, 226 F.3d at 

138 (quoting Kerotest Mfg. Co. v. C-O-Two Fire Equip. Co., 342 

U.S. 180, 183 (1952)). 

3 In TPM Holdings, we also said that "where the overlap between 

two suits is less than complete, the judgment is made case by case, 

based on such factors as the extent of overlap, the likelihood of 

conflict, the comparative advantage and the interest of each forum 

in resolving the dispute." 91 F.3d at 4 (internal citation 

omitted).
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The Supreme Court, though, has left no doubt that such 

a "general principle . . . to avoid duplicative litigation" holds 

water only within the federal system. Colo. River, 424 U.S. at 

817. When the jurisdictional overlap is "between state and federal 

courts" the justification for applying that general principle

vanishes: "the pendency of an action in the state court is no bar 

to proceedings concerning the same matter in the Federal court 

having jurisdiction." Id. (quoting McClellan v. Carland, 217 U.S. 

268, 282 (1910)); see Sprint Commc'ns, Inc. v. Jacobs, 571 U.S. 

69, 73 (2013). This divergence, the Court explained, "stems from 

the virtually unflagging obligation of the federal courts to 

exercise the jurisdiction given them." Colo. River, 424 U.S. at 

817; accord Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U.S. 922, 928 (1975). 

Consistent with this distinction, the decisional

calculus changes when the competing litigation lies outside the 

federal system. A federal court cannot renounce jurisdiction in 

the absence of "the clearest of justifications." Jiménez v. 

Rodríguez-Pagán, 597 F.3d 18, 27 (1st Cir. 2010) (quoting Colo. 

River, 424 U.S. at 819). The dimensions of any such justification 

are circumscribed "by an 'exceptional-circumstances test,' whose 

non-exclusive list of factors we have drawn from Colorado River

and its progeny." Id. (quoting Moses H. Cone Mem'l Hosp., 460 

U.S. at 16). Under this test, "[d]uplication and inefficiency are 

not enough to support a federal court's decision to bow out of a 
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case over which it has jurisdiction." Burns v. Watler, 931 F.2d 

140, 146 (1st Cir. 1991) (quoting Villa Marina Yacht Sales, Inc.

v. Hatteras Yachts, 915 F.2d 7, 13 (1st Cir. 1990)). Except when

warranted by a doctrine of abstention or comity recognized by the 

Supreme Court, see Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 

544 U.S. 280, 292 (2005), a federal court is not free to surrender 

jurisdiction — whether by outright dismissal or by a stay — to a 

parallel state-court action without a sufficient showing of the 

required exceptional circumstances, see Moses H. Cone Mem'l Hosp., 

460 U.S. at 19. 

In the case at hand, the district court abused its 

discretion by skipping the Colorado River inquiry and using instead 

a jerry-built substitute. See id. (holding that court's discretion 

is abused where not "exercised under the relevant standard" of 

"Colorado River's exceptional-circumstances test"). The court 

below explicitly declined to "consider [the] request for 

abstention under Colorado River."4 Maldonado-Cabrera, 2020 WL 

6047748, at *2. Instead, it dismissed the case under the prior 

pending action doctrine "in order to avoid inconsistent judgments 

4 Although it did not decide the issue, the court expressed 

doubt that Colorado River abstention was justified. See MaldonadoCabrera, 2020 WL 6047748, at *2. The court's misgivings were 

rooted in the fact that "Dr. Santiago-Diaz's bid for Colorado River

abstention was largely premised on the existence of unsettled 

issues of Puerto Rico law concerning application of the damages 

cap," which issues had "since been settled by the Puerto Rico 

Supreme Court." Id.
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and promote judicial efficiency." Id. at *5. Those reasons, 

measured against Supreme Court doctrine, are insufficient.

We hold that the court's failure to apply the correct 

test, drawn from Colorado River and its progeny, constituted an 

abuse of discretion. Given that the district court has yet to 

address the issue, we take no view as to whether the Colorado River

factors will support either a stay or an order of dismissal on 

these facts.5 That determination is "left to the discretion of 

the district court in the first instance." Moses H. Cone Mem'l 

Hosp., 460 U.S. at 19. 

We add a coda. The court below did not blaze a new trail 

but, rather, followed a series of district court decisions in this 

circuit that have embraced the prior pending action doctrine to 

defer to parallel state-court litigation. See, e.g., U.S. Fire 

Ins. Co. v. Equitas Ins. Ltd., No. 18-1205, 2019 WL 5457934, at *4 

(D.N.H. Oct. 24, 2019); Bradeen v. Bank of New York Mellon Tr. 

Co., No. 18-11753, 2018 WL 5792319, at *2-3 (D. Mass. Nov. 2, 

2018); Qutab v. Kyäni, Inc., 324 F. Supp. 3d 243, 247 (D. Mass. 

2018); Quality One Wireless, LLC v. Goldie Grp., LLC, 37 F. Supp. 

5 When deferral under Colorado River is warranted, the 

decision whether to stay or dismiss is "committed . . . to the 

discretion of the district courts." Jiménez, 597 F.3d at 31. 

Although other courts of appeals "have held that a stay is always 

preferable," we have declined to lay down a categorical rule. Id.

at 31-32 (citing cases). We have, however, noted this circuit's 

historical "trend" of opting for a stay and have observed that 

this is "the more cautious route." Id. at 32.
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3d 536, 541-43 (D. Mass. 2014). We reject those decisions insofar 

as they apply a test that departs from the test elucidated in 

Colorado River and its progeny. Although the prior pending action 

doctrine and Colorado River abstention are both grounded in similar 

considerations of "wise judicial administration," Colo. River, 424 

U.S. at 818, there is at least one salient difference: the 

Colorado River test loads the dice with a "presumption in favor of 

assuming jurisdiction," Jiménez, 597 F.3d at 28, which can be 

overcome only by the "clearest of justifications displayed by 

exceptional circumstances," Nazario-Lugo v. Caribevisión Holdings, 

Inc., 670 F.3d 109, 116 (1st Cir. 2012). As we have explained, 

the court below abused its discretion by failing to apply the 

requisite exceptional-circumstances test.

III

We need go no further. For the reasons delineated above, 

the order of the district court is vacated and the case is remanded

for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Costs shall 

be taxed in favor of the plaintiffs.

Vacated and Remanded.