Opinion ID: 201605
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Relevance of Preclusive Effect Under State Law

Text: 18 Our pre- Exxon Mobil case law also recognized, albeit not uniformly, an alternative conception of final judgment. The law of claim and issue preclusion (also known as res judicata and collateral estoppel) provides a notion of final judgment that is related to, but distinct from, finality for purposes of Supreme Court review. 8 We have suggested, in some of our cases, that [o]nly a state court adjudication that itself has preclusive effect can bring the Rooker-Feldman doctrine into play. Cruz, 204 F.3d at 21 n. 5; see also Badillo-Santiago v. Naveira-Merly, 378 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2004) ( Rooker-Feldman applies to state or territorial court judgments to which the federal courts would accord preclusive effect, and the federal courts `can ascribe no greater preclusive force to a state court judgment than would the courts of that state.') (quoting Cruz, 204 F.3d at 21; internal citation omitted); Pérez-Guzmán v. Gracia, 346 F.3d 229, 238 n. 5 (1st Cir.2003) (same), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 960, 124 S.Ct. 1724, 158 L.Ed.2d 401 (2004). 9 19 Yet we have also stated, in apparent contradiction to the above cases, that Rooker-Feldman does not require a decision to have state law preclusive effect. See Maymó-Meléndez v. Álvarez-Ramírez, 364 F.3d 27, 32-33 (1st Cir.) ( Rooker-Feldman is broader and blunter than res judicata, and does not impose res judicata's technical requirements, [s]o, despite the disapproval of scholars, federal courts regularly use Rooker-Feldman to rebuff collateral attacks on prior state court judgments without purporting to apply the technical preclusion rules of res judicata), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 125 S.Ct. 110, 160 L.Ed.2d 120 (2004); Mandel v. Town of Orleans, 326 F.3d 267, 271 (1st Cir.2003) ( Rooker-Feldman applies whether or not the federal and state causes of action are technically the same for purposes of claim preclusion, or whether all of the familiar conditions for issue preclusion are met.) (citation omitted); Sheehan v. Marr, 207 F.3d 35, 40 n. 5 (1st Cir.2000) (noting that res judicata ... and Rooker-Feldman are separate doctrines, [although] they have a `close affinity' to one another, and quoting Charchenko v. City of Stillwater, 47 F.3d 981, 983 n. 1 (8th Cir.1995), for the proposition that  Rooker-Feldman is broader than claim and issue preclusion because it does not depend on a final judgment on the merits).