Court Opinion

ID: 9459814
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:32:34.893338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:20.961297
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge,
(concurring) .
I concur in the result reached by the majority, but I do not join in the opinion. The district court dismissed the complaint on abstention principles. The majority affirms on res judicata, what they describe as “a ground other than that relied upon by the district court.” I am not persuaded that the abstention doctrine, relied upon by the district court, is divorced from res judicata.
Abstention is a judicially developed doctrine limiting district court action under certain circumstances. I perceive it to be a shorthand expression encompassing several aspects of federal restraint. (1) In a Pullman-type abstention,1 the Court stays its hand and retains jurisdiction until the state court acts. (2) In a Burford-type abstention,2 the Court dismisses the *102complaint and flatly declares that the subject matter is for state court determination. (3) An England-type abstention envisions two stages.3 Where the case is filed in federal court before a state court decision, a Pullman-type abstention comes into being, the federal court staying its hand until the state court acts. If, after the state proceedings terminate, the plaintiff returns, the federal court must make a factual determination. It must decide whether the federal questions were presented to the state court. If they were, and were not reserved, then, on the theory of res ju-dicata, the court may properly dismiss the federal action. It is this second stage which gives the label “England-type” to this category of abstention; the first stage is purely and simply a Pullman-type abstention.
In the case before us, we had only the second stage. The appellants came to the federal court after the state court proceedings. There was thus no need for a first stage Pullman-type abstention. Call it England-type abstention or garden variety res judicata,4 it is the same to me.
I do not believe it is necessary to cut terminology so fine as to suggest that England only applies where the filing of the federal action precedes the state action. I find no magic in the “right to return” expression in the opinion. The essence of the doctrine is as stated by Mr. Justice Brennan: “[W]e see no reason why a party, after unreservedly litigating his federal claims in the state courts although not required to do so, should be allowed to ignore the adverse state decision and start all over again in the District Court.” 375 U.S. at 419, 84 S.Ct. at 466. See Commonwealth ex rel. Specter v. Levin, 359 F.Supp. 12 (E.D. Pa., three-judge court, 1973).
Abstention takes even other forms. Professor Charles Alan Wright lists the Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), sextet as one of “The Abstention Doctrines.”5 The editors of Hart and Wechsler’s the Federal Courts and the Federal System, 2d Ed., prefer a general category of “Judicially Developed Limitations on Entertaining Actions Against State Officers”6 in which they include “B. Abstention: The Pullman Doctrine”7 and “C. Equitable Restraint: The Doctrine of Douglas v. City of Jeanette.”8 It is under “equitable restraint” rather than “abstention” that they place Younger9 Mechanical dependence upon labels leads to difficulties. The separate nomenclature used by America’s foremost federal court commentators emphasizes the importance of the conceptual and factual underpinnings of a case rather than reliance upon a neat label attached to its holding.
Although the majority’s discussion of Younger appears to be dictum, I find it necessary to add these observations. Younger held that federal courts will not entertain an action to restrain an ongoing state proceeding if the federal plaintiff has the opportunity of asserting his constitutional contentions in a single state action. I perceive nothing in this notion that limits the application of the conceptual basis of Younger to criminal cases. In Berryhill v. Gibson, 411 U.S. 564, 93 S.Ct. 1689, 36 L.Ed.2d 488 (1973), the Supreme Court had an un*103cluttered opportunity to say that the rationale of Younger was inapplicable to civil actions. But this, the court did not do.
I have found Lynch v. Snepp, 472 F.2d 769, 773 (4th Cir. 1973), to be the most scholarly discussion of this point. There, the Fourth Circuit, speaking through Judge Craven, applied Younger to a state civil action arising from a school disturbance:
These general notions of comity, equity, and federalism, applied since the early days of our Union of States and most recently restated in Younger and its companion cases, occupy a highly important place in our history and our future. Their application should never be made to turn on such labels as “civil” or “criminal” but rather upon an analysis of the competing interests in each case. Palaio v. McAuliffe, 466 F.2d 1230, 1232-1233 (5th Gir. 1972); Cousins v. Wigoda, 463 F.2d 603 (7th Cir.) application for stay denied, 409 U.S. 1201, 92 S.Ct. 2610, 34 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972) (Rehnquist, Circuit Justice) .
A fair reading of the district court’s opinion in the case before us discloses that Judge Scalera approached the problem much the same as Judge Craven in Snepp. Judge Scalera emphasized the “irreparable injury” test, citing De Vita v. Sills, 422 F.2d 1172 (3d Cir. 1970); Younger said that irreparable injury must be “both immediate and great.” 401 U.S. at 46, 91 S.Ct. 746 Snepp reversed the grant of a preliminary injunction because plaintiffs “failed to show great and immediate irreparable injury [and] that their rights would not be protected in the state proceedings. . . . ” 472 F.2d at 776.
The fundamental equitable concepts of Younger must never be subordinated. Thus, one piece of the Younger factual complex must not become the subject of controlling emphasis to the exclusion of the important legal principles constituting the rationale of the case. An example of this is the suggestion that the root premises of Younger do not lie where there is no ongoing state proceeding. While the contemporaneity of the state action may indeed be extremely important, this is but one factor, and this one factor must not be considered in vacuo.
Younger is a jurisprudential brew of many interdependent principles and traditions, which Judge Craven described as “general notions of comity, equity, and federalism applied since the early days of our Union of States.” And I find it difficult if not impossible, to lift one particular ingredient from the brew and then isolate it. And if I could, I dare say it would be impossible to divest it from the flavor of the other ingredients. Thus, if the presence of ah ongoing state proceeding is critical, so is the necessity of proving entitlement to an immediate injunction. So understood, there is a delightful Catch-22 quality about it all:
Plaintiff: Aha, you can’t apply Younger, because there is no ongoing state proceeding.
Defendant: Aha to you, sir. If there is no ongoing state proceeding, then why do you need an injunction? What’s there to enjoin?
On balance, while I agree that perhaps the neatest way of affirming the district court is via the England-res judicata route, I am also prepared to affirm Judge Scalera on the strength of his “irreparable harm” discussion.

. Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). See also Lake Carriers’ Association v. MacMullan, 406 U.S. 498, 92 S.Ct. 1749, 32 L.Ed.2d 257 (1972) ; Askew v. Hargrave, 401 U.S. 476, 91 S.Ct. 856, 28 L. Ed.2d 196 (1971) ; Fornaris v. Ridge Tool Co., 400 U.S. 41, 91 S.Ct. 156, 27 L.Ed.2d 174 (1970) ; Reetz v. Bozanich, 397 U.S. 82, 90 S.Ct. 788, 25 L.Ed.2d 68 (1970) ; United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Ideal Cement Co., 369 U.S. 134, 82 S.Ct. 676, 7 L.Ed.2d 623 (1962) ; Clay v. Sun Insurance Office Ltd., 363 U.S. 207, 80 S.Ct. 1222, 4 L.Ed.2d 1170 (1960) ; City of Meridian v. Southern Bell Tel. and Tel. Co., 358 U.S. 639, 79 S.Ct. 455, 3 L.Ed.2d 562 (1959) ; Albertson v. Millard, Attorney General of Michigan, 345 U.S. 242, 73 S.Ct. 600, 97 L.Ed. 983 (1953) ; Spector Motor Co. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 65 S.Ct. 152, 89 L.Ed. 101 (1944).

. Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 63 S.Ct. 1098, 87 L.Ed. 1424 (1943). See also Alabama Public Service Commission v. Southern R. Co., 341 U.S. 341, 71 S.Ct. 762, 95 L.Ed. 1002 (1951) ; Magaziner v. Monte-muro, 468 F.2d 782 (3d Cir. 1972) ; Reich-man v. Pittsburgh National Bank, 465 F.2d *10216, 18 (3d Cir. 1972) ; Allegheny Airlines, Inc. v. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, 465 F.2d 237 (3d Cir. 1972). Cf. ALI Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts, § 1371(d) ; § 1371(d) of S. 1876, 93d Congress, 1st Session, proposed Federal Court Jurisdiction Act of 1973.

. England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 375 U.S. 411, 84 S.Ct. 461, II L.Ed.2d 440 (1964).

. Commissioner v. Sunnen, 333 U.S. 591, 597, 68 S.Ct. 715, 92 L.Ed. 898 (1948).

. C. Wright, Law of Federal Courts, 1972 Pocket Part, 23.

. At 980.

. At 985.

. At 1009.

. At 1021.