Opinion ID: 791778
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The procedural Rooker-Feldman requirements

Text: 39 Rooker-Feldman does not automatically bar every federal suit that seeks review and rejection of an injury-creating state decision. Instead, such federal suits must meet two further requirements, which we have termed procedural, imposed by Exxon Mobil: 1) the federal suit must follow the state judgment; and 2) the parties in the state and federal suits must be the same. 544 U.S. at ___, 125 S.Ct. at 1521-22. 40 The timing requirement will usually be straightforward, although federal suits challenging interlocutory state judgments may present difficult questions as to whether the state proceedings have `ended' within the meaning of Rooker-Feldman on the federal questions at issue. Federacion de Maestros de P.R. v. Junta de Relaciones del Trabajo de P.R., 410 F.3d 17 (1st Cir. May 27, 2005), 2005 U.S.App. LEXIS 9748, at  (quoting Exxon Mobil, 125 S.Ct. at 1526) (discussing this question). More commonly, however, the federal suit will come after the state suit has unequivocally terminated, as in this case: the New York Court of Appeals decided on October 14, 2004, that the contested ballots should not be counted, Gross III, 785 N.Y.S.2d 729, 819 N.E.2d at 197, 199, and the plaintiffs filed suit in federal district court on October 19, 2004, Hoblock, 341 F.Supp.2d at 172. 41 The second requirement, common identity between the state and federal plaintiffs, will also often be straightforward, as when the federal plaintiff was a named party in the state lawsuit. In this case, however, whether the party-identity requirement is met is not obvious. Candidates Hoblock and Carman were plainly parties in state court, but they have abandoned their appeal. We are left with the question whether the voters, despite not having appeared in state court, should nonetheless be considered state-court losers for Rooker-Feldman purposes. 42 Because Rooker-Feldman is a doctrine of federal subject-matter jurisdiction, we must look to federal law to determine whether the voters should be treated, for Rooker-Feldman purposes, as if they were parties to the candidates' state-court suit. See Suzanna Sherry, Judicial Federalism in the Trenches: The Rooker-Feldman Doctrine in Action, 74 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1085, 1101 (1999); see also David P. Currie, Res Judicata: The Neglected Defense, 45 U. Chi. L.Rev. 317, 324 (1978) ( Rooker thus provides for a limited, uniform federal law of preclusion in cases that varying state laws may not foreclose.). While we recognize that claim and issue preclusion are distinct from the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, we believe that federal case law governing the application of preclusion doctrines to nonparties should guide the analogous inquiry in the Rooker-Feldman context. 7 43 In Montana v. United States, 440 U.S. 147, 154 n. 5, 99 S.Ct. 970, 59 L.Ed.2d 210 (1979), the Court seemed to discourage using the term privity to describe the relationship between nonparties who assume control over litigation in which they have a direct financial or proprietary interest and are therefore subject to issue preclusion based on the results of litigation that they controlled. Subsequently, however, the Court has used the term privity in discussing the principles according to which a nonparty may be bound by an earlier judgment. Richards v. Jefferson County, 517 U.S. 793, 798, 116 S.Ct. 1761, 135 L.Ed.2d 76 (1996). 44 Following Richards, we think that the party-identity question in this case may be posed this way: is there sufficient privity, as a matter of federal law, between the voters and the candidates that the voters should be considered parties to, and bound by, the candidates' state lawsuit against the Board? The Supreme Court has explained that a nonparty can be bound by the results of someone else's litigation when, in certain limited circumstances, a person, although not a party, has his interests adequately represented by someone with the same interests who is a party. Martin v. Wilks, 490 U.S. 755, 762 n. 2, 109 S.Ct. 2180, 104 L.Ed.2d 835 (1989); see also Richards, 517 U.S. at 798-99, 116 S.Ct. 1761 (quoting Wilks ). Wilks provided two examples of such limited circumstances: 1) where the first suit was brought by a class representative and the second suit was brought by a class member, as discussed in Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32, 41-42, 61 S.Ct. 115, 85 L.Ed. 22 (1940); and 2) where the second suit was brought by a party who actually controlled, without being a party to, the first suit, as discussed in Montana, 440 U.S. at 154-55, 99 S.Ct. 970. Wilks, 490 U.S. at 762 n. 2, 109 S.Ct. 2180. 45 Some lower federal courts have expansively interpreted the concept of privity under federal law to reach beyond the limited circumstances discussed in Wilks. Under the so-called doctrine of virtual representation, a person may be bound by a judgment even though not a party if one of the parties to the suit is so closely aligned with his interests as to be his virtual representative. Aerojet-Gen. Corp. v. Askew, 511 F.2d 710, 719 (5th Cir.1975). We have endorsed this doctrine, observing that claim preclusion may bar non-parties to earlier litigation . . . when the interests involved in the prior litigation are virtually identical to those in later litigation. Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A. v. Celotex Corp., 56 F.3d 343, 345 (2d Cir.1995). The virtual-representation doctrine is controversial, however, and the Seventh Circuit has sharply criticized it. Tice v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 162 F.3d 966, 970-73 (7th Cir.1998); see also 18A Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure: Jurisdiction 2d § 4457 (2002). 46 We need not determine whether the Supreme Court's discussion of privity in Richards, which postdates both Aerojet-General and Chase Manhattan Bank, undermines the virtual-representation doctrine, for even under that doctrine, which gives privity its broadest scope under federal law, the candidates did not virtually represent the interests of the voters when the candidates sued the Board in state court. As a general matter, in an election contest the interests of candidates (who seek to be elected) and the interests of voters (who seek to have their votes counted) may overlap, but they are not necessarily virtually identical to each other, as Chase Manhattan Bank requires for the virtual-representation doctrine to apply. See Schulz v. Williams, 44 F.3d 48, 54 (2d Cir.1994); Tarpley v. Salerno, 803 F.2d 57, 60 (2d Cir.1986). In this case in particular, the candidates' initial position in the state litigation was directly hostile to the interests of some voters in having their votes counted: the candidates sought to have certain absentee ballots declared invalid. Given that the state court disregarded the candidates' subsequent attempt to argue in favor of counting disputed ballots and instead ruled on the candidates' initial challenges, the candidates did not virtually represent the voters' interests in state court. 47 It remains possible, however, that the plaintiff voters and candidates are in privity if the candidates in fact are controlling the voters' federal suit, not to advance the interests of all voters who submitted challenged absentee ballots, but rather to further the interests of the candidates and a subset of voters whose interests do coincide exactly with those of the candidates. If the plaintiff voters are in reality the candidates' pawns, then by definition the plaintiff voters' interests are identical to the candidates' (and different from the interests of all similarly situated voters) and were adequately represented in the candidates' state-court lawsuit. And as Wilks explained, where a nonparty controls a party, identity of interest and adequacy of representation suffice to create privity between nonparties and parties to an earlier suit. 490 U.S. at 762 n. 2, 109 S.Ct. 2180. 48 Aspects of the complaint in the federal suit, together with information revealed by the state-court proceedings, raise at least the possibility that the plaintiff voters are puppets and the candidates puppetmasters. The complaint, filed jointly by the voters and the candidates, challenges not the Board's decision to disregard all absentee ballots issued ostensibly in violation of state law and the district-court order, but only a very particular subset of those ballots. 49 In the state-court litigation, the four candidates petitioned to have a total of 83 ballots invalidated: Carman challenged 18, Gross challenged 24, Hoblock challenged 16, and Messercola challenged 25. Of the 83 challenged ballots, 43 are not at issue in this suit because no one disputes that the state court properly ruled on their validity. Which of the remaining 40 ballots, challenged in state court because they were issued based on a November 2003 application, are at issue in the current litigation is a critical question. The federal-court complaint, filed initially by Hoblock, Carman, and seven named voters, purports to be filed on behalf of those seven and all other voters similarly situated. Compl. ¶ 2. The complaint refers to the 27 class members that are the subject of this action, id. ¶ 38, and to 27 absentee ballots upon which voters cast ballots. Id. ¶ 31. The complaint, however, actually names only 26 voters (the 7 named plaintiffs and 19 others). Id. ¶ 32. 50 It turns out that the 26 named voters are a very particular subset of the 40 voters whose ballots were challenged because those ballots were issued based on a November 2003 application: they are voters whose ballots were challenged in state court by candidates Gross and Messercola. Of the 14 remaining voters in the group of 40 (i.e., those 14 not named in the complaint), 13 were challenged in state court by Hoblock or Carman, and 1 (Christina Marbach Kellett) was challenged by Messercola. It seems that the complaint inadvertently failed to name this last voter, hence the 1-person discrepancy between the 27 absentee ballots referred to in the complaint and the 26 named voters. 51 If the named voter plaintiffs are suing only to require the Board of Elections to count ballots that candidates Gross and Messercola challenged in state court, despite purporting to sue on behalf of all other voters similarly situated, then the voter plaintiffs are effectively suing only on behalf of Hoblock and Carman, not on behalf of all 40 voters whose ballots were invalidated because they were issued based on a November 2003 application. This suggests that the voter plaintiffs may actually be the pawns of Hoblock and Carman and that, rather than advancing the interests of all similarly situated voters (which may diverge from the candidates' interests), they are advancing only the candidates' interests. 52 When pressed at oral argument to explain why the complaint named only 26 voters despite the voters' asserted interest in representing all similarly situated voters, the voters' counsel explained that he filed the complaint hastily. He maintained that the voters did indeed intend to represent all similarly situated voters, and that although he had copied sections from the candidates' complaint, the voters were not simply trying to have those ballots counted that candidates Hoblock and Carman (but not Messercola and Gross) wanted counted. 53 This explanation is not wholly satisfying. Nonetheless, if the voters indeed represent the interests of all 40 voters whose ballots were rejected by the state court because they were issued based on a November 2003 application, then the voters' interests are plainly distinct from the candidates' interests. And to the extent that the voters, represented by counsel independent from the candidates' counsel, seek to advance their own interests by having all 40 disputed ballots counted — some of which candidates Hoblock and Carman argued (at least initially) in state court should not be counted — the voters could not be considered to be under the candidates' control. The requirements for privity under federal law — identity of interests and adequacy of representation — are thus absent if the voters seek to have all 40 disputed ballots counted. 54 We therefore remand the case with instructions that the district court grant the voters the opportunity to amend their complaint to make clear whether they seek to have all 40 disputed ballots counted. If the voters so amend their complaint, Rooker-Feldman will not bar their suit, for by amending the complaint the voters will demonstrate that they are not in privity with the candidates. Conversely, if the voters decline to amend their complaint, they will demonstrate that in fact they are the tools of, and therefore in privity with, Hoblock and Carman, and Rooker-Feldman will bar their suit.