Court Opinion

ID: 9463787
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:16:23.565118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:17.261397
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I believe that Thistlethwaite v. City of New York, 497 F.2d 339 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1093, 95 S.Ct. 686, 42 L.Ed.2d 686 (1974), and Tang v. Appellate Division, 487 F.2d 138, 141 (2d Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 906, 94 S.Ct. 1611, 40 L.Ed.2d 111 (1974), were wrongly decided, for the reasons stated in my dissenting opinions in those cases. Thistlethwaite, like this case, involved an assertion of federal rights in a state proceeding by an involuntary party to that proceeding; Tang was erroneously supposed to involve an election to pursue state remedies, which an applicant for admission to the bar was said to make merely by applying for admission. I note that Thistlethwaite is inconsistent with several cases from other circuits, see Theis, Res Judicata in Civil Rights Act Cases: An Introduction to the Problem, 70 Nw.L.Rev. 859, 865-66 & n. 35 (1976), and that the Sixth Circuit agrees with the dissenting opinion in Tang, Getty v. Reed, 547 F.2d 971, at 974-976 (6th Cir. 1977). But unsound as I believe Thistlethwaite and Tang to be, emasculative as they are of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and federal constitutional rights, I am bound to follow them as the law of the circuit. I therefore reluctantly concur in the judgment of the court.