Caplinger v. Carter
| Decision Date | 23 June 1982 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 80-4259. |
| Citation | 541 F. Supp. 716 |
| Parties | James CAPLINGER, Sr., and James Caplinger, Jr., Plaintiffs, v. Charles R. CARTER, III, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Kansas |
Charles D. McAtee, Eidson, Lewis, Porter & Haynes, Topeka, Kan., for plaintiffs.
Wilburn Dillon, Jr., George E. Erickson, Jr., Robert E. Duncan, II, Asst. City Attys., Topeka, Kan., for defendants.
This matter is before the Court on defendants' motion to dismiss. This is a civil rights action involving claims of police misconduct and unlawful use of force. This action has been brought against the City of Topeka and various police officers and supervisors. Plaintiffs have filed an identical civil action in the Shawnee County, Kansas, District Court. Defendants object to defending identical lawsuits in different courts, and are concerned about the prospects of encountering inconsistent results in the two cases.
Plaintiffs come before the Court and state that they filed a motion to dismiss their state case without prejudice, which motion was denied on May 20, 1982. The state district judge denied that motion because defendants had filed a counterclaim in the state case, and K.S.A. 60-241(a)(2) prohibits dismissal without prejudice in the face of objections by a counterclaimant. The objecting counterclaimant in the state case is defendant Hren, one of the defendants moving to dismiss in this case.
The position of the parties before the Court is as follows. Plaintiffs wish to dismiss their state court action and pursue their remedies in federal court. Defendants refuse to allow plaintiffs to dismiss their state case. Defendants wish the matter to be tried in the state court.
As framed by the defendants, the precise issue before the Court is whether or not the Court should dismiss this case, or abstain in this action on grounds of judicial economy and allow the entire case to proceed solely in state court.
This Court has a duty to exercise its jurisdiction and to adjudicate every case fairly brought before it. Abstention is "an extraordinary and narrow exception to the duty of a district court to adjudicate a controversy properly before it." County of Allegheny v. Frank Mashuda Co., 360 U.S. 185, 188, 79 S.Ct. 1060, 1062, 3 L.Ed.2d 1163 (1959). The United States Supreme Court has stated that abstention should be confined to three categories of cases: (1) "cases presenting a federal constitutional issue which might be mooted or presented in a different posture by a state court determination of pertinent state law" County of Allegheny, supra, at 189, 79 S.Ct. at 1063; (2) cases which present "difficult questions of state law bearing on policy problems of substantial public import whose importance transcends the result in the case then at bar" Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 814, 96 S.Ct. 1236, 1244, 47 L.Ed.2d 483 (1976); and (3) cases in which, "absent bad faith, harassment, or a patently invalid state statute, federal jurisdiction has been invoked for the purpose of restraining state criminal proceedings." Id. at 816, 96 S.Ct. at 1245. Defendants have failed to show that any of these exceptions apply to this case.
A fourth category has been recognized by many lower courts. Abstention is sometimes proper in situations involving the contemporaneous exercise of concurrent jurisdiction, either by federal courts or by state and federal courts, in order to prevent duplicative litigation. It is upon this ground that defendants base their motion to dismiss or abstain.
This Court is not required to dismiss a lawsuit just because there is a lawsuit pending in a state court between the same parties involving the same subject matter. McClellan v. Carland, 217 U.S. 268, 282, 30 S.Ct. 501, 505, 54 L.Ed. 762 (1910). Independent actions involving the same claim are allowed, usually, to proceed simultaneously in both the federal and state courts until one of them results in a judgment which may be asserted as res judicata in the other. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. C. D. Price, 48 F.R.D. 1, 3 (S.D.Ohio 1969). See also, Colorado River, supra, 424 U.S. at 817, 96 S.Ct. at 1246. Although there is no doubt about the power of federal district courts to stay a federal action until a similar action is concluded in the state court (1A Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 0.2034), the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has maintained a fairly restrictive view of stays in such situations. The Tenth Circuit has not specifically ruled out abstention, however. Consistently it has held that a district court should not dismiss a case in which it intends to abstain. Rather, the court of appeals has directed the district courts to hold the action in abeyance pending final resolution of the state case. University of Oklahoma Gay People's Union v. Board of Regents, 661 F.2d 858 (10th Cir. 1981); Western Food Plan, Inc. v. J. D. MacFarlane, 588 F.2d 778 (10th Cir. 1978); Continental Oil Co. v. State of Oklahoma, 574 F.2d 1016 (10th Cir. 1978). Therefore, defendants' motion to dismiss will be denied.
The question remains whether the Court should hold this action in abeyance pending final determination in the state court. The United States Supreme Court discussed the so-called fourth abstention exception in the Colorado River, supra, case in 1976.
The United States Supreme Court recognized that in a case involving concurrent jurisdiction between state and federal courts, "wise judicial administration, giving regard to conservation of judicial resources and comprehensive disposition of litigation," might dictate that the federal court should defer to the state court proceeding. 424 U.S. at 817, 96 S.Ct. at 1246. That court held that abeyance in such situations is limited to exceptional circumstances, however.
The Court went on to list at least some of the factors that a federal court should consider in deciding whether or not to invoke its power to abstain in such circumstances. They are: (1) the inconvenience of the federal forum; (2) the desirability of avoiding piecemeal litigation; and (3) the order in which jurisdiction was obtained by the different courts. Id. at 818, 96 S.Ct. at 1246. There has been added a fourth factor: whether or not the state...
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Tucker v. Callahan
...it is the "unavoidable price of preserving access to federal relief that § 1983 assures," Tovar, supra at 1293. See Caplinger v. Carter, 541 F.Supp. 716 (D.Kansas 1982). Duplication is the usual, not the exceptional circumstance in section 1983 litigation. Although judicial efficiency is to......
- MASINGILL v. State of Ark., LR-C-82-450.