Court Opinion

ID: 9426991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:24.172122+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:04.363521
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.
The Court holds that a state court lacks the power to enjoin persons subject to its jurisdiction from initiating duplicative and vexatious litigation in the federal courts, litigation which had not been commenced at the time of the state-court injunction. While this conclusion is arguably supported by a portion of the holding of Donovan v. Dallas, 377 U. S. 408 (1964), it is in many ways contrary to the reasoning of that decision, and undermines the historic power of courts of equity to guard against abuse of judicial proceedings. Because Donovan involves a procedural rule which has application in myriad situations, I believe that its holding should be in part re-examined.
In Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 116 (1965), the Court said:
“Unless inexorably commanded by statute, a procedural principle of this importance should not be kept on the books in the name of stare decisis once it is proved to be unworkable in practice; the mischievous consequences to litigants and courts alike from the perpetuation of an unworkable rule are too great.”
The author of Donovan was particularly cognizant of the sensitive relationship between state and federal courts. See *20Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971); Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281, 287 (1970). Because the rule in Donovan implicates that relationship, I would not extend its holding as the Court now does.
The Court in Donovan based its decision on the “general rule” that “state and federal courts would not interfere with or try to restrain each other’s proceedings.” 377 U. S., at 412. Such a general rule of parity implies that, where a federal district court has power to enjoin the institution of proceedings in state court, a state court must have a similar power to forbid the initiation of vexatious litigation in federal court.
Congress, in enacting the Anti-Injunction Act limiting the authority of United States courts to stay proceedings in any court of a State, 28 U. S. C. § 2283, excepted from the limitation an injunction “where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.” See Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 231-236 (1972); Atlantic Coast Line, supra, at 294-296. Cf. Kline v. Burke Constr. Co., 260 U. S. 226 (1922). If Congress saw fit to create such an exception to the “ [1] egislative policy [which] is here expressed in a clear-cut prohibition,” Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros. Co., 348 U. S. 511, 516 (1955), it could not have intended to deny the same limited injunctive authority to state courts of general jurisdiction. Neither the Supremacy Clause of Art. VI of the Constitution or the congressional grants of jurisdiction to federal courts in any way militate against the conclusion that both state and federal courts possess the authority to protect jurisdiction which they have acquired from being undercut or nullified by suits later instituted in the courts of the other jurisdiction.
Unlike the Texas Court of Civil Appeals in Donovan, the New Mexico District Court in this case enjoined only the initiation of new proceedings, specifically excepting two federal-court actions already begun by petitioner and its constituent partners. Any ambiguity inherent in the wording of the *21District Court’s injunction with regard to other proceedings has been authoritatively resolved by the Supreme Court of New Mexico, which held: “The injunction is directed only towards the institution of future litigation wherein no federal or state court has yet to acquire jurisdiction.” 90 N. M. 120, 124, 560 P. 2d 541, 545 (1977). The existence of power in the state courts to guard against the abuse of the federal courts for purposes of harassment is not foreclosed by Donovan, even though this Court, in vacating the contempt citation of those parties who initiated a federal action subsequent to the state order, necessarily held that the Texas court lacked such power in that instance. There, in the subsequent action, the federal plaintiffs sought to enjoin the Supreme Court of Texas from interfering with a pending action which this Court held they had a right to maintain. The conclusion that the New Mexico court has the power to forbid petitioner from involving respondent in a multitude of separate actions with different parties does not undercut the holding of Donovan that a federal plaintiff may seek to protect his right to proceed with a pending suit.
The Supreme Court of New Mexico has acted consistently with both the holding and the reasoning of Donovan, and I would therefore affirm its judgment.