Bryant v. Sylvester, 94-1635

• Decision Date: 01 June 1995
• Docket Number: No. 94-1635,94-1635
• Citation: 57 F.3d 308
• Parties: Andre M. BRYANT; Fathers' and Children's Equality, Inc., Appellees, v. Esther R. SYLVESTER, Honorable, Administrative Judge-Family Division in her official and individual capacity; Nancy Sobolevitch, Esquire, Court Administrator in her official and individual capacity; Geoff Gallas, Executive Court Administrator in his official and individual capacity; Matthew Tierney, Court Administrator-Family Division in his official and individual capacity; Joseph Di Primio, Esquire, Court Administrator in his official and individual capacity; Andrea Hoffman-Jelin, Esquire, Director of Children and Youth Services in her official and individual capacity, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Page 308

57 F.3d 308

Andre M. BRYANT; Fathers' and Children's Equality, Inc., Appellees, v. Esther R. SYLVESTER, Honorable, Administrative Judge-Family Division in her official and individual capacity; Nancy Sobolevitch, Esquire, Court Administrator in her official and individual capacity; Geoff Gallas, Executive Court Administrator in his official and individual capacity Matthew Tierney, Court Administrator-Family Division in his official and individual capacity; Joseph Di Primio Esquire, Court Administrator in his official and individual capacity; Andrea Hoffman-Jelin, Esquire, Director of Children and Youth Services in her official and individual capacity, Appellants.

No. 94-1635.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Argued Dec. 7, 1994.

Opinion Vacated June 1, 1995.

Submitted Pursuant to LAR 34.1(a)

on Panel Rehearing June 5, 1995.

Decided June 8, 1995.

David M. Donaldson (argued), Howard M. Holmes, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Administrative Office of Pa. Courts, Philadelphia, PA, for appellants.

Ronald K.M. Williams (argued), Northwest Legal Center, Philadelphia, PA, for appellees.

Before: STAPLETON, ROTH and LEWIS, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

LEWIS, Circuit Judge.

This case raises an issue of apparent first impression: whether an order denying the Rooker-Feldman defense is final as a collateral order. We conclude that an order denying the Rooker-Feldman defense is not final as a collateral order and is not immediately appealable under the collateral order doctrine. We will therefore dismiss this appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

I.

The Family Court Division of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County operates a nursery at the Family Court Building in Philadelphia. In operating this nursery, the Family Court provides an area for supervised visitation in cases in which supervised visitation has been ordered by the Family Court. In early November of 1993, the Honorable Esther Sylvester, Administrative Judge of the Family Court Division of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, and a defendant in this case, approved the closing of the Family Court nursery on two dates: December 26, 1993 and January 2, 1994. The plaintiffs, Andre Bryant, a non-custodial parent restricted, by court order, to visitation in the Family Court-operated nursery, and Fathers' and Children's Equality, Inc., a non-profit Pennsylvania corporation "chartered to insure the continual access of children to their non-custodial parents and extended family members," Plaintiffs' brief at 3, sought in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court to enjoin the defendants from closing the nursery on these days. The matter was transferred on jurisdictional grounds to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court where the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction was denied without hearing. No appeal to the United States Supreme Court was sought.

In early March of 1994, Judge Sylvester again authorized the closing of the Family Court nursery, this time on April 3, 1994. Soon after the authorization of this additional nursery closing, the plaintiffs filed this class action lawsuit in which they claim that by closing the nursery, the defendants violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. In lieu of filing an answer, the defendants moved to dismiss under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) and (6). The defendants contended, inter alia, that judicial immunity and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine required dismissal of the plaintiffs' complaint. The district court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss and ordered that discovery proceed. This appeal followed. ¹

II.

Ordinarily, we review only "final" decisions of the district court under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291. ² Federal Ins. Co. v. Richard I. Rubin & Co., Inc., 12 F.3d 1270, 1279 (3d Cir.1993). A decision is final only when there is a " 'decision by the district court that ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.' " Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). According to the defendants, however, we have appellate jurisdiction over this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291. The defendants contend the district court's order denying the defendants' motion to dismiss is appealable under the "collateral order" doctrine first articulated in Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949). In Cohen, the Supreme Court held that a "small class" of collateral orders are final and appealable under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291 even though they do not terminate the underlying litigation. Cohen, 337 U.S. at 546, 69 S.Ct. at 1225-26. For an order to come within Cohen's collateral order rule, it must satisfy three tests: first, the order must "conclusively determine" the disputed question; second, it must "resolve an important issue completely separate" from the merits of the action; and third, it must be "effectively unreviewable" on appeal from a final judgment. Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468-69, 98 S.Ct. 2454, 2457-58, 57 L.Ed.2d 351 (1978). If the order at issue fails to satisfy any one of these requirements, it is not an appealable collateral order. See Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. v. Mayacamas Corp., 485 U.S. 271, 276, 108 S.Ct. 1133, 1136-37, 99 L.Ed.2d 296 (1988); Communication Workers v. American Tel. & Tel., 932 F.2d 199, 205 (3d Cir.1991).

The Supreme Court has repeatedly referred to the collateral order doctrine as a "narrow exception" to the final judgment rule, ³ see, e.g., Richardson-Merrell, Inc. v. Koller, 472 U.S. 424, 430, 105 S.Ct. 2757, 2760-61, 86 L.Ed.2d 340 (1985) (citation omitted), and we have, accordingly, construed the doctrine narrowly " 'lest the exception swallow up the salutary general rule' that only final orders may be appealed." Yakowicz v. Pennsylvania, 683 F.2d 778, 783 n. 10 (3d Cir.1982) (citation omitted); see Transtech Industries, Inc. v. A & Z Septic Clean, 5 F.3d 51, 57 (3d Cir.1993) ("We have followed the Supreme Court's admonition and 'have consistently construed the Cohen exception narrowly rather than expansively.' " (citations omitted)). Strict construction of the collateral order doctrine is designed to further the long-standing Congressional policy against piecemeal appeals which underlies the final judgment rule. See Lusardi v. Xerox Corp., 747 F.2d 174, 177 (3d Cir.1984). ⁴ To guard against the temptation of expanding the doctrine's reach, the Supreme Court has instructed that the issue of the immediate appealability of orders that do not terminate litigation is to be determined for the entire category to which the order belongs, "without regard to the chance that the litigation at hand might be speeded, or a 'particular injustice' averted, by a prompt appellate court decision." Digital Equipment Corporation v. Desktop Direct, Inc., --- U.S. ----, ----, 114 S.Ct. 1992, 1996, 128 L.Ed.2d 842 (1994) (citation omitted).

Before determining whether the district court's order denying the defendants' Rooker-Feldman defense qualifies as a collateral order, a word or two is in order concerning Rooker-Feldman. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine provides that federal district courts lack subject matter jurisdiction to sit in direct review of state court adjudications or to hear constitutional claims that are "inextricably intertwined" with the state court's decision. District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 482 n. 16, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 1315-16, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983). See also Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923) ("Under the legislation of Congress, no court of the United States other than this Court could entertain a proceeding to reverse or modify" a state court judgment.). This limitation upon federal district court subject matter jurisdiction is usually said to derive from 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1257, which provides that "[f]inal judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a state in which a decision could be had, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court...." See, e.g., Valenti v. Mitchell, 962 F.2d 288, 296 (3d Cir.1992). In addition to this formal statutory basis for the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, we have identified other justifications for the rule:

As with Younger abstention, which requires federal courts to abstain when there is a pending state court proceeding, part of the justification for Rooker-Feldman is respect for state courts. Just as federal district courts should presume that pending state court proceedings can correctly resolve federal questions, they should also presume that completed state court proceedings have correctly resolved these questions.

A second justification for Rooker-Feldman stems from its similarity to claim preclusion. Like claim preclusion, Rooker-Feldman is partly concerned with finality, with ensuring that litigants do not take multiple bites from the same apple. Once litigants' claims have been adjudicated in the state court system, they should not also have access to the entire federal court system.

Guarino v. Larsen, 11 F.3d 1151, 1157 (3d Cir.1993) (citations omitted). With this sketch of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine's contours in mind, we turn now to evaluate the immediate appealability of the district court's order denying the defendants their Rooker-Feldman defense.

III.

A decision denying a motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is considered to fall outside the Cohen exception to the final decision rule. See Transtech Industries, Inc. v. A & Z Septic Clean, 5 F.3d 51, 58 (3d Cir.1993); United States v. Layton, 645 F.2d 681, 683 (9th Cir.1981) (holding that challenges to subject matter jurisdiction generally fail the third prong of the Cohen test); Moore's Federal Practice p 110.10 p. 74 (citing cases). Likewise, decisions denying assertions of res judicata are considered to be beyond the collateral order exception. See Digital Equipment Corporation, --- U.S. at ----, 114 S.Ct. at 1998; Transtech...