Cruz v. Melecio

Decision Date06 December 1999
Docket NumberNo. 99-1960,99-1960
Parties(1st Cir. 2000) PEDRO OSCAR CRUZ, ET AL., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. JUAN R. MELECIO, ETC., ET AL., Defendants, Appellees. Heard
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

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Roberto A. Fernandez for appellants.

Pedro A. Delgado, with whom O'Neill & Borges was on brief, for defendants-appellees.

Gustavo A. Gelp, Solicitor General, Puerto Rico Dep't of Justice, for intervenor-appellee.

Before Selya, Boudin and Lynch, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

The appellants in this case challenge the constitutionality of certain provisions of Puerto Rico law regulating ballot access on the part of political parties. Their appeal asks us to set aside an order of the district court dismissing their complaint and to grant declaratory and injunctive relief. Resolving this dilemma requires us to confront complex and highly nuanced questions of comity, federalism, and the proper use of federal judicial power. After studying the problems presented, we reverse the order of dismissal and remand to the district court with directions to stay further proceedings pending the resolution of a related case awaiting decision before the Puerto Rico Supreme Court.

I. BACKGROUND

The appellants are citizens of Puerto Rico and members of the Partido Accion Civil (the Party). They seek to register the Party on a commonwealth-wide basis, so that its candidates will appear on the ballot for the November 2000 general election. To do so, they must file petitions with the Puerto Rico Election Commission (the Commission) before June 1, 2000, which have been signed by registered voters aggregating no less than five percent of the total votes cast for gubernatorial candidates in the preceding general election. See P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 16, § 3101(3). Each petition must be notarized and filed within seven days. See id. §§ 3101(3), 3102. Based on participation in the 1996 gubernatorial election, the Party must garner approximately 100,000 signatures.

Apparently viewing this hurdle as insurmountable (or nearly so), the appellants filed this action for declaratory and injunctive relief in Puerto Rico's federal district court. They named the members of the Commission as defendants and asserted that the notarization requirement and seven-day deadline, separately and in combination, transgress the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by abridging the appellants' rights to free speech and association, to participate meaningfully in the political process, to vote, and to enjoy equal protection of the laws. In support of these asseverations, the appellants allege that the process is prohibitively expensive because only attorneys can act as notaries in Puerto Rico; that, in any event, too few are willing to take the time to validate petitions; that the seven-day requirement is burdensome in light of the tight time parameters and the "monumental" paperwork that must be included when a petition is submitted to the Commission; that petitions to register a local party need not be notarized; that petitions for aspirants in party primaries may be filed ten days after being sworn (rather than seven); and that there is no comparable deadline for petitions to place independent candidates on the ballot.

The appellants filed their federal complaint on March 23, 1999, and simultaneously moved for a preliminary injunction. Defendant-appellee Juan R. Melecio, the Commission chairman, cross-moved for dismissal. The Puerto Rico Attorney General intervened, see 28 U.S.C. § 2403(b), and joined Melecio's motion to dismiss. The motion theorized that the appellants' action was barred by res judicata and that, in all events, the challenged requirements serve compelling state interests without unduly burdening voters' constitutional rights.

The reference to res judicata relates to an action filed by the Party in a commonwealth court on October 6, 1998. In that suit, brought against the Commissioners and others, the Party challenged the same ballot-access requirements under both the United States and Puerto Rico constitutions. The Puerto Rico Court of First Instance granted summary judgment in favor of the defendants on January 21, 1999. Just two days after the commencement of the federal court action, the Puerto Rico Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment. See Partido Accion Civil v. Commonwealth, No. KLAN9900158, slip op. (P.R. App. Mar. 25, 1999). The Party took a further appeal to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. On July 30, that court dismissed the appeal, see P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 4, § 22i(b) (providing for direct appeal from a judgment of unconstitutionality, but not from a judgment of constitutionality), instead granting certiorari. The case (No. AC-1999-20) has been briefed and is awaiting decision.1

The district court elected neither to delve into the intricacies of the res judicata defense nor to address the appellants' prayer for preliminary injunctive relief. Instead, it went straight to the heart of the case and dismissed the action on the merits. See Cruz v. Melecio, Civ. No. 99-1296 (PG), slip op. (D.P.R. July 7, 1999) (granting defendants' and intervenor's motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6)). The district court ruled while the improvident commonwealth appeal was pending and a few days before the Puerto Rico Supreme Court granted certiorari. This appeal ensued.

II. RES JUDICATA

If successful, the res judicata defense ends our inquiry. Thus, we begin by addressing the efficacy of that defense.

By federal statute, "judicial proceedings of any court of any . . . State, Territory or Possession . . . shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States . . . as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession." 28 U.S.C. § 1738. This mandate "requires federal courts to give the same preclusive effect to state court judgments that those judgments would be given in the courts of the State from which the judgments emerged." Kremer v. Chemical Constr. Corp., 456 U.S. 461, 466 (1982). The fact that a suit raises a federal question or seeks to vindicate federal constitutional rights does not blunt the force of this command. See Migra v. Warren City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 465 U.S. 75, 80-85 (1984); Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 96-105 (1980). Consequently, state law, with all its wrinkles, applies in deciding the res judicata effect of a state court judgment in a federal court.2 See Montalvo-Huertas v. Rivera-Cruz, 885 F.2d 971, 974 (1st Cir. 1989). We therefore look to the law of Puerto Rico to deduce the preclusive effect of the judgment entered by the Court of First Instance.

The Civil Code limns the operation of the doctrine of res judicata in Puerto Rico:

In order that the presumption of the res adjudicata may be valid in another suit, it is necessary that, between the case decided by the sentence and that in which the same is invoked, there be the most perfect identity between the things, causes, and persons of the litigants, and their capacity as such.

P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, § 3343. Although the present appellants are not named parties in the commonwealth court proceedings, they are members of the organization that is the plaintiff there and they control that litigation. This type of privity suffices for res judicata purposes. See Montalvo-Huertas, 885 F.2d at 975 (applying Puerto Rico law); see also Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 39 (1982). After all, courts typically have refrained from interpreting the phrase "perfect identity" literally, see Futura Dev. Corp. v. Centex Corp., 761 F.2d 33, 43-45 (1st Cir. 1985), and the appellants do not suggest that nominal differences between two actions will suffice to undermine the preclusive effect of a commonwealth court ruling.

Going beyond "identity" questions, due process imposes an added requirement: for res judicata to operate, the precluded party must have had a full and fair opportunity to litigate her case in the earlier proceeding. See Allen, 449 U.S. at 95; Massachusetts Sch. of Law at Andover v. American Bar Ass'n, 142 F.3d 26, 39 (1st Cir. 1998); Medina v. Chase Manhattan Bank, 737 F.2d 140, 145 (1st Cir. 1984). The appellants seize upon this imperative and vigorously assert that they were denied a full and fair opportunity to litigate their federal claims in the commonwealth proceedings.

Stripped of rhetorical flourishes, this assertion reduces to the notion that, by deciding the case on summary judgment and without hearing oral argument, the commonwealth trial court deprived the Party of an opportunity to litigate its claims. This is sheer persiflage. There is nothing fundamentally unfair about the summary judgment process, nor does the absence of an opportunity to supplement written submissions with oral advocacy constitute a denial of due process.3 See United States v. One 1974 Porsche 911-S, 682 F.2d 283, 286 (1st Cir. 1982) ("There is no constitutional right to oral argument on a summary judgment motion.").

The appellants' next argument -- that the commonwealth trial court failed to acknowledge the constitutional principles underlying their claims -- leads nowhere. Although the commonwealth trial court did not explicitly mention the federal constitutional rights of Party members, it relied throughout its opinion on United States Supreme Court case law evaluating the constitutionality of registration requirements for new political parties. We have deemed even more cryptic references sufficient in other settings to show that a state court considered a federal constitutional argument, see, e.g., Nadworny v. Fair, 872 F.2d 1093, 1101-03 (1st Cir. 1989), and we see no reason to apply a different rule in this context. At any rate, it takes more than imprecise opinion writing to ground a violation of due process in a situation of this...

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