Dunn v. Carey

• Decision Date: 16 December 1986
• Docket Number: 86-2102,Nos. 86-2101,s. 86-2101
• Citation: 808 F.2d 555
• Parties: Michael A. DUNN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. James B. CAREY, Delaware County Sheriff, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 555

808 F.2d 555

Michael A. DUNN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. James B. CAREY, Delaware County Sheriff, et al., Defendants.

Nos. 86-2101, 86-2102.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 22, 1986.

Decided Dec. 16, 1986.

Lawrence M. Reuben, Atlas, Hyatt & Reuben, P.A., Fergus Kear, Indianapolis, Ind., for plaintiffs.

H. Erskine Cherry, Braddock, Cherry, Godfrey & Clase, Anderson, Ind., for defendants.

Before FLAUM and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges, and SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.

Michael Dunn and two others filed suit in 1978, on behalf of a class of inmates, contending that conditions at the Delaware County Jail violated the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees. The case was settled in 1984 by a consent decree providing for the construction of a new "Public Safety Complex" in Delaware County. The Complex was to include a new city hall for Muncie, Indiana, and new police facilities as well as a new jail. Under the decree the city and county governments would lease the Complex, and the cost of the lease would be directly funded by new taxes.

Richard Amburn and Effie Mae Kingen, who were not parties to the federal litigation, complained to the Indiana State Board of Tax Commissioners that the adoption of the plans and lease was irregular, because the parties had bypassed procedures required by state law for the approval of public buildings. The Board thought otherwise and approved both the lease and the ensuing tax. Amburn and Kingen then filed suit in the Delaware Superior Court, asking the court to upset the Board's decision.

Contending that the pending state action prevented their borrowing the money to build the Complex, the parties in the federal action asked the district judge to join Amburn and Kingen as parties and to enjoin the conduct of the state case. The judge dismissed the petition to join Amburn and Kingen. 110 F.R.D. 439 (S.D.Ind.1986). We have jurisdiction of the appeal from this decision because the federal parties wanted an injunction against Amburn and Kingen. The court's refusal to add them as parties was just the procedural device by which it denied the injunction, and under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(a)(1) the disposition is appealable. Procedural devices that effectively deny injunctive relief and cause irreparable harm to the moving party's quest for injunctive relief are treated as orders denying injunctions. Carson v. American Brands, Inc., 450 U.S. 79, 84, 101 S.Ct. 993, 996, 67 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981); Uehlein v. Jackson National Life Insurance Co., 794 F.2d 300 (7th Cir.1986); Donovan v. Robbins, 752 F.2d 1170, 1173-74 (7th Cir.1985). The order refusing to add Amburn and Kingen as parties conclusively denies all of the relief that had been requested, and so we have jurisdiction.

The district judge concluded that adding Amburn and Kingen as parties is inappropriate because no relief against them is available. None is available, the judge held, because Amburn and Kingen have invoked in state court remedies against the collection of taxes. The judge read the Tax Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1341, as prohibiting any federal relief when a litigant in state court is pursuing plain, speedy, and efficient remedies against the assessment or collection of taxes. The Indiana remedies are plain, speedy, and efficient, the judge concluded, making federal relief unavailable. The parties have debated at length whether Amburn and Kingen's remedies are plain, speedy, and efficient; we conclude, however, that the Tax Injunction Act does not apply to this case.

The several litigants want two sorts of relief. Amburn and Kingen want an injunction against the assessment of taxes, and they have asked a state court for this. The federal parties want an injunction against the conduct of state litigation, and they have asked a federal court for this. The Tax Injunction Act applies only to requests that federal courts interfere with the collection of state taxes; a separate Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2283, governs requests that federal courts interfere with the conduct of state litigation.

The Tax Injunction Act provides:

The district courts shall not enjoin, suspend or restrain the assessment, levy or collection of any tax under State law where a plain, speedy and efficient remedy may be had in the courts of such State.

The natural reading of this language is that district courts confronted with requests to "enjoin, suspend or restrain" state taxes shall stay their hands unless there are no "plain, speedy and efficient" state remedies. The district judge was not requested in this case to interfere with the collection of a tax; he was asked to interfere with the conduct of litigation. If he had interfered as requested, the result would have been to allow the collection of a tax. On the other hand, the request to enjoin state litigation brought into play the Anti-Injunction Act of 1793, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2283, which says:

A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments.

This statute exactly describes what the federal parties want: an "injunction to stay proceedings in a State court". And the ground on which the parties want it also is listed: "to protect or effectuate" a judgment, here the consent decree.

Although the district court concluded that Sec. 1341 applies to any federal litigation touching on the subject of state taxes, neither the language nor the legislative history of the statute supports this interpretation. The text of Sec. 1341 does not suggest that federal courts should tread lightly in issuing orders that might allow local governments to raise additional taxes. The legislative history, exhaustively reviewed in cases such as Rosewell v. LaSalle National Bank, 450 U.S. 503, 512-14, 522-23, 101 S.Ct. 1221, 1233-34, 67 L.Ed.2d 464 (1981), shows that Sec. 1341 is designed to ensure that federal courts do not interfere with states' collection of taxes, so long as the taxpayers have an opportunity to present to a court federal defenses to the imposition and collection of the taxes. The legislative history is filled with concern that federal judgments were emptying state coffers and that corporations with access to the diversity jurisdiction could obtain remedies unavailable to resident taxpayers. There was no articulated concern about federal courts' flogging state and local governments to collect additional taxes.

The parties have not identified, and we have not found, any legislative history suggesting that the statute deals with injunctions against litigation, or forbids injunctions that might increase state taxes. If the statute had this effect, then injunctions that compel or lead inevitably to the collection of state taxes, as in Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U.S. 267, 97 S.Ct. 2749, 53 L.Ed.2d 745 (1977), would fall under a cloud. Injunctions that lead to taxes must be scrutinized under the eleventh amendment and related principles of governmental immunities, see Papasan v. Allain, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 2932, 2939-43, 92 L.Ed.2d 209 (1986); Gary A. v. New Trier High School District No. 203, 796 F.2d 940 (7th Cir.1986). They do not face an additional hurdle under Sec. 1341. That statute has nothing to do with complaints that federal courts are causing or allowing states to collect too much money in taxes. Cf. Board of Education v. Bosworth, 713 F.2d 1316 (7th Cir.1983) (Sec. 1341 does not forestall a federal suit to compel a state to distribute taxes, once collected, in accordance with law).

The irrelevance of Sec. 1341 does not imply, however, that the district court should have fetched Amburn and Kingen into the case or granted the injunction the parties request. The Anti-Injunction Act bars the way unless the injunction is necessary to "protect or effectuate" the federal judgment. This language was added to Sec. 2283 in 1948 in order to reverse the result of Toucey v. New York Life Insurance Co., 314 U.S. 118, 62 S.Ct. 139, 86 L.Ed. 100 (1941), which had held that the losing party in a federal case may obtain from a state court a redetermination of the subject decided by the federal judgment. See Martin H. Redish, The Anti-Injunction Statute Reconsidered, 44 U.Chi.L.Rev. 717, 722-26 (1977). See also Atlantic Coast Line R.R. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 398 U.S. 281, 285-93, 90 S.Ct. 1739, 1742-46, 26 L.Ed.2d 234 (1970). The new language permits the federal court to preempt the state proceeding by declaring the preclusive effect of its own judgment. So if the defendants in this case had taken to the state courts to challenge the consent decree, the district judge could have enjoined the suit and pulled the dispute back into federal court. We may assume that if people acting in concert with the defendants had initiated the state suit, the result could be the same. See United States v. ASCAP, 442 F.2d 601 (2d Cir.1971) (using the relitigation exception to enjoin a state suit filed by members of an organization that was party to a consent decree). But Amburn and Kingen were not parties in the federal case and are not otherwise directly bound by the federal decree. It follows that they may litigate in a forum appropriate to the nature of the claim. See Bechtel Petroleum, Inc. v. Webster, 636 F.Supp. 486, 497-503 (N.D.Cal.1984), aff'd and adopted, 796 F.2d 252 (9th Cir.1986). To the extent there is doubt, the federal court should err on the side of non-intervention. Atlantic Coast, 398 U.S. at 297, 90 S.Ct. at 1748. See also California v. Grace Brethren Church, 457 U.S. 393, 102 S.Ct. 2498, 73 L.Ed.2d 93 (1982) (reading Sec. 1341 to prohibit declaratory judgments as well as injunctions); Fair Assessment in Real Estate Ass'n v. McNary, 454 U.S. 100, 102 S.Ct. 177, 70 L.Ed.2d 271 (1981) (discussing principles of comity in cases...