BerrÍos v. GonzÁlez–rosario

• Decision Date: 16 December 2010
• Docket Number: No. 08–2458.,08–2458.
• Parties: Jose Julian CRUZ BERRÍOS, Plaintiff, Appellant,v.Carlos GONZÁLEZ–ROSARIO, William Class–Quirós, Rafael Oliver Baez, Miguel Ortiz–Marrero, Enil Montalvo–Morales, Santos Jiménez–Colón, Erick García–Santos, Eddie M. Cruz–Santiago, Sergeant Uzziel Ruiz–Ledeé, Sergeant Reinaldo Surén, Sergeant Osvaldo Rivera–Domínguez, Fnu O'Farrill, Jamie López, Jorge Silvestrini, Jorge Rodríguez, Miguel Pereira and Wilmer Sepúlveda, Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

630 F.3d 7

Jose Julian CRUZ BERRÍOS, Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.Carlos GONZÁLEZ–ROSARIO, William Class–Quirós, Rafael Oliver Baez, Miguel Ortiz–Marrero, Enil Montalvo–Morales, Santos Jiménez–Colón, Erick García–Santos, Eddie M. Cruz–Santiago, Sergeant Uzziel Ruiz–Ledeé, Sergeant Reinaldo Surén, Sergeant Osvaldo Rivera–Domínguez, Fnu O'Farrill, Jamie López, Jorge Silvestrini, Jorge Rodríguez, Miguel Pereira and Wilmer Sepúlveda, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 08–2458.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Submitted April 8, 2010.Decided Dec. 16, 2010.

Victor J. Quiñones, Edgardo Cartagena, Ramon E. Dapena and Usera Morell Bauza Dapena & Cartagena, LLP, on brief for appellant.Irene S. Soroeta–Kodesh, Solicitor General, Leticia Casalduc–Rabell, Deputy Solicitor General, Zaira Z. Girón–Anadón, Deputy Solicitor General, and Michelle Camacho–Nieves, Assistant Solicitor General, Department of Justice, on brief for appellees.Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, BOUDIN and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

José Julian Cruz–Berríos, an inmate currently serving a sentence under the jurisdiction of the Puerto Rico Department of Corrections, brought a federal civil rights action against various corrections officers whom he alleges exerted excessive force against him. The district court dismissed the action after determining that it was precluded as res judicata by his previous, unsuccessful state suit based on similar alleged conduct.¹ Cruz–Berríos v. Gonzalez–Rosario, 577 F.Supp.2d 561 (D.P.R.2008). Cruz–Berríos now appeals. After review, we affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand the case to the district court for further development of the record and clarification on matters of Puerto Rico law.

I.

In March 2004, Cruz–Berríos filed a lawsuit in the Puerto Rico Court of First Instance under Article 1802 of the P.R. Civil Code, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31 § 5141, alleging that officers in the Puerto Rico correctional facility where he was housed had assaulted him in retaliation for implicating them in a drug trafficking investigation. His complaint referred to two separate incidents of abuse, one on November 9, 2002, and another on February 28, 2004.

Shortly after initiating that action, Cruz–Berríos also filed a complaint in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, making similar allegations. Some, though not all, of the named defendants in the federal complaint were also defendants in the state court case. Cruz–Berríos twice amended the federal complaint, each time adding a new incident that he claimed had occurred after the most recent filing.² In the first amended complaint, he added additional corrections officers and administrators as defendants and included a third assault that had allegedly occurred on August 18, 2004, which he claimed was part of the same general pattern of retaliation as the original two incidents. In the second amended complaint, he alleged a fourth such incident, which he claimed occurred on March 2, 2005, and added another prison administrator as a defendant.³ Of these four alleged incidents, only the claims concerning the last three were permitted to proceed, as the district court determined that the claim arising out of the November 2002 incident was time-barred.⁴

Due to developments in the state court case, however, those three claims did not proceed very far. After a bench trial, the Court of First Instance entered judgment against Cruz–Berríos, finding that no excessive use of force had been used on either of the dates discussed in the state complaint (November 2002 and February 2004) and that he had failed to show that he had been singled out for retaliatory persecution or harassment. That adverse judgment, the federal district court later held, precluded the § 1983 action in its entirety, including the allegations against the additional defendants concerning incidents that had not previously been the subject of litigation. The district court dismissed the case, and this appeal ensued.

II.

The defendants ask us to affirm on two separate bases. They primarily argue that we may rely on the district court's preclusion rationale, which is subject to de novo review. Ramallo Bros. Printing, Inc. v. El Dia, Inc., 490 F.3d 86, 89 (1st Cir.2007). Offering an alternative means to the same end, they also assert that Cruz–Berríos failed to exhaust his administrative remedies before filing his federal claim, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). Because the second of these arguments may provide an uncomplicated means of resolving this case on a more developed record, we begin there.

A.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (“PLRA”), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a), provides that “[n]o action shall be brought with respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison, or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies as are available are exhausted.” This exhaustion requirement applies to allegations of physical violence by prison guards. Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532, 122 S.Ct. 983, 152 L.Ed.2d 12 (2002).

The defendants contend that dismissal is warranted here because the complaint fails to indicate whether or not Cruz–Berríos has exhausted his administrative remedies. But it was not Cruz–Berríos's burden to plead exhaustion, which must be raised and proved by the defense. Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 216, 127 S.Ct. 910, 166 L.Ed.2d 798 (2007). Although the defendants have now raised the issue, neither they nor Cruz–Berríos have pointed to any evidence in the record that would indicate one way or the other whether the exhaustion requirement has in fact been satisfied. And because the district court dismissed the case on preclusion grounds, it never addressed the matter. Accordingly, we remand the case to the district court for additional fact-finding as to whether the PLRA exhaustion requirement bars Cruz–Berríos's suit or not. If so, it would obviate any further need to consider the preclusive effect of the Court of First Instance's decision. But this is the defendants' burden to prove.

B.

A final judgment on a matter may, in certain circumstances, prevent that matter's re-adjudication in a subsequent case. The doctrine of res judicata ⁵ “relieve[s] parties of the cost and vexation of multiple lawsuits, conserve[s] judicial resources, and, by preventing inconsistent decisions, encourage[s] reliance on adjudication.” Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 94, 101 S.Ct. 411, 66 L.Ed.2d 308 (1980). Because “[u]nder the full faith and credit statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, a judgment rendered in a state court is entitled to the same preclusive effect in federal court as it would be given within the state in which it was rendered,” In re Sonus Networks, Inc., 499 F.3d 47, 56 (1st Cir.2007), we look to Puerto Rico law in order to determine the res judicata implications of the Court of First Instance's judgment.

Puerto Rico's law of res judicata is codified at P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31, § 3343, which provides that a prior judgment will have preclusive effect when there is “the most perfect identity between the things, causes, and persons of the litigants, and their capacity as such.” This provision encompasses both of the two traditional aspects of res judicata: claim preclusion and issue preclusion. Coors Brewing Co. v. Mendez–Torres, 562 F.3d 3, 19 (1st Cir.2009). Under Puerto Rico's res judicata scheme, claim preclusion “binds parties from litigating or relitigating any claim that was or could have been litigated in a prior adjudication and prevents claim splitting,” Gener–Villar v. Adcom Group, Inc., 417 F.3d 201, 205 (1st Cir.2005) (per curiam) (internal brackets omitted); issue preclusion, on the other hand, “forecloses relitigation in a subsequent action of a fact essential for rendering a judgment in a prior action between the same parties, even when different causes of action are involved.” Id. at 205–06.

The three claims presented to us on appeal, corresponding to the final three alleged incidents of abuse, fall into two categories.⁶ The February 2004 incident has already been the subject of actual litigation in the Court of First Instance. The August 2004 and March 2005 incidents, on the other hand, have not. The district court concluded that this distinction was irrelevant and that all three claims were subject to issue preclusion. Citing the rule that “a plaintiff cannot avoid the bar of [issue preclusion] simply by suing a defendant for continuing the same conduct that was found to be lawful in a previous suit brought by the same plaintiff,” ⁷ Ramallo Bros. Printing, Inc., 490 F.3d at 91, the court held that no material differences existed between any of the alleged incidents of abuse because the plaintiff presented them as part of a “ continuing pattern of violation.” Cruz–Berríos, 577 F.Supp.2d at 564 (emphasis in original). As a result, to the extent that the first set of incidents was found to be lawful in the state case, the second set of incidents would also be lawful as a matter of issue preclusion.

We disagree. The distinction between the claims already adjudicated and those not already adjudicated remains critical here. It is therefore necessary to unravel the individual allegations that the district court viewed as part of a single whole.

1.

To begin with, issue preclusion does not apply to the events that the Court of First Instance never expressly or implicitly considered. The alleged August 2004 and March 2005 beatings, which appeared for the first time in the federal case, are independent events that are far too fact-specific to lend themselves to generalization as “the same conduct” examined in the state case. That the Court of First Instance held Cruz–Berríos's treatment in prison to be lawful on certain occasions does not necessarily dictate as a matter of issue preclusion that his treatment on subsequent occasions must be held lawful as well. Cf. Dawkins v. Nabisco,...