Fields v. Rockdale County Georgia

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit
• Writing for the Court: Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, ANDERSON; GODBOLD
• Citation: Fields v. Rockdale County Georgia, 785 F.2d 1558 (11th Cir. 1986)
• Decision Date: 08 April 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-8286,85-8286
• Parties: Ann P. FIELDS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. ROCKDALE COUNTY GEORGIA, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Page 1558

785 F.2d 1558

Ann P. FIELDS, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. ROCKDALE COUNTY GEORGIA, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 85-8286.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

April 8, 1986.

John A. Nix, Conyers, Ga., Albert M. Pearson, Univ. of Ga., School of Law, Athens, Ga., for defendants-appellants.

Kathleen Kessler, Abraham A. Sharony, Atlanta, Ga., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, ATKINS ^*, Senior District Judge.

GODBOLD, Chief Judge:

Gerald and Ann Fields, under the name "Life for God's Stray Animals, Inc." began a not-for-profit "no-kill" animal shelter some time before 1980, operated on a lot on Presidential Circle in Lakeview Estates, a mobile home park in Rockdale County, Georgia. The number of animals maintained at this site was as great as 300. The county filed suit in the Superior Court of Rockdale County to enjoin the Fields from maintaining the shelter in the trailer park. A consent order was entered in August 1980 allowing the Fields to move the shelter to a seven-acre site on Farmer Road, elsewhere in the county. This decree required the Fields to seek appropriate building permits and zoning variances and to build a fence along the Farmer Road frontage to conceal the shelter.

The shelter was moved to the Farmer Road site. The Fields applied to the County Board of Zoning Appeals for a variance from a 200-foot setback ordinance but were denied. They did not appeal the denial to the County Board of Commissioners. In 1982 the county filed suit in superior court to enjoin the Fields from expanding the Farmer Road shelter. An order was entered in July 1982 prohibiting further expansion.

Early in 1983 a neighborhood association sued the county and the Fields in superior court to abate an alleged nuisance and to require enforcement of the setback ordinance. The county cross-claimed. Following trials, orders were entered requiring the county to enforce the setback and enjoining the Fields from operating a nuisance. The order addressed to the Fields directed them to propose a compliance plan. Presumably no such plan was submitted. The orders were stayed pending the Fields' appeal. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed the judgments. Life for God's Stray Animals, Inc. v. New North Rockdale County Homeowners Ass'n, 253 Ga. 551, 322 S.E.2d 239 (1984).

In September 1984, shortly before the Georgia Supreme Court issued its decision, the Fields contracted to buy a 220-acre parcel of land, also in Rockdale County, on Miller Bottom Road, adjoining the county dump. They hoped to transfer the population of the Farmer Road site, which then totalled approximately 1,000 animals, to a new facility to be built at Miller Bottom. News of the purchase was published, and within ten days the county passed an ordinance ¹ that would limit the population of animals in any kennel to 150 dogs and 50 cats. Commonly owned or managed kennels located within a one nautical mile radius of one another were treated under the ordinance as a single kennel. The Fields consummated the purchase of the Miller Bottom property in November 1984.

Upon remand from the Georgia Supreme Court, the superior court in January 1985 found the county in non-willful contempt of its order requiring the county to enforce the setback at the Farmer Road site. The county moved for a permanent injunction against the Fields, and in February 1985 the superior court ordered the Fields to remove by February 25 all structures on the Farmer Road property not within the 200-foot setback line. The Fields appealed these orders and moved for stays. The superior court denied a stay. The Fields then filed a motion for supersedeas, which was denied, and the denial was affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court on February 20.

On February 25, the day of expiration of the deadline for removal set by the superior court, the Fields filed this suit against the county in the U.S. District Court, praying for damages and temporary and permanent injunctive relief. The complaint alleged fraud and conspiracy in the county's defense of the homeowners association litigation, thus depriving the Fields of due process, contractual rights, and freedom of religion. The complaint also alleged that the kennel ordinance was arbitrary and unreasonable, that it was the basis of the county's refusal to grant building permits for the Miller Bottom tract, and that it created a suspect class "directed against" the Fields. The complaint further alleged that the Fields applied on November 30, 1984 for development permits for Miller Bottom and that the County had refused, in part because of the kennel ordinance, to issue the permits. Also, the Fields alleged that the kennel ordinance was selectively enforced and that the county's refusal to grant building permits for the Miller Road site was a taking without just compensation. The homeowners association was permitted to intervene, and the Fields amended their complaint to include allegations against the association.

On February 26, 1985 the district court granted the Fields a temporary restraining order, and on March 25 the court issued a preliminary injunction against the county. The court found that it had no jurisdiction over the allegations related to the litigation of the setback ordinance at Farmer Road, citing Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923). ² The district court held that abstention doctrines did not bar its exercise of jurisdiction over the allegations related to the kennel ordinance. In its analysis of the propriety of abstention under the doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), the court noted that the constitutionality of the kennel ordinance had not been raised in earlier state court proceedings and that relief could be framed that would not affect pending state proceedings. As for abstention under the doctrine of Railroad Comm'n v. Pullman, 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941), the court found that the Fields had "not articulated any real question of state law [and], in any event ... there is no indication that the state law to be applied is unsettled or involves a unique state constitutional issue...."

Having crossed the abstention threshold, the district court applied the familiar four-part test to determine the propriety of preliminary injunctive relief, see Gresham v. Windrush Partners, Ltd., 730 F.2d 1417, 1423 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 249, 83 L.Ed.2d 187 (1984) and concluded that the relevant factors, including a reasonable likelihood that the Fields would ultimately prevail in their federal equal protection challenge, warranted a preliminary injunction.

The county appealed. It issued development permits for the Miller Bottom property on May 3, 1985 but reserved its legal rights, specifically those at issue here. The intervenor association is not a party to this appeal.

DISCUSSION

Abstention is "an extraordinary and narrow exception to the duty of a [federal] Court to adjudicate a controversy properly before it," and is justified "only in the exceptional circumstances where the order to the parties to repair to the state court would clearly serve an important countervailing interest." Allegheny County v. Mashuda Co., 360 U.S. 185, 188-89, 79 S.Ct. 1060, 1063, 3 L.Ed.2d 1163 (1959). Abstention questions must be resolved by close attention to the facts of each case. Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 375-79, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 1324-26, 12 L.Ed.2d 377 (1964); Ross v. Houston Indep. School Dist., 559 F.2d 937, 942 (5th Cir.1977). In this case there are exceptional circumstances and countervailing interests. ³

Matters of land use planning are primarily of local concern, Louisiana Power & Light Co. v. City of Thibodaux, 360 U.S. 25, 28, 79 S.Ct. 1070, 1072, 3 L.Ed.2d 1058 (1959). The "routine application of zoning regulations ... is distinctly a feature of local government," Hill v. City of El Paso, 437 F.2d 352, 357 (5th Cir.1971). In Hill, the issue was whether plaintiff's business was a public garage or a "junk" yard and, if the latter, whether the city ordinance proscribing junkyards was impermissibly vague under the federal constitution. Plaintiff sought an injunction of state civil and criminal proceedings and a declaration that the zoning ordinance was unconstitutional. Noting that the ordinance was unclear on its face and that a state court decision could moot the federal constitutional question, Hill held that the facts presented a "classic" case for abstention under Pullman.

In the present case there is no parallel unclarity as to whether the Fields operate a "kennel", but there is considerable lack of clarity surrounding the possible application of the kennel ordinance to the Fields' operations. Even if the kennel ordinance were a model of clarity, there is a "fair possibility" that a state court would strike it as contrary to the Georgia constitution, which would avoid the necessity of reaching federal constitutional questions. See C. Wright, The Law of Federal Courts 304 (1983); see also, Avant v. Douglas County, 253 Ga. 225, 319 S.E.2d 442 (1984) (striking, on unspecified constitutional grounds, an ordinance "limiting the number of animals per tract without taking into consideration the size of the tract"), following Barrett v. Hamby, 235 Ga. 262, 219 S.E.2d 399 (1975) (striking zoning ordinance on Fourteenth Amendment and Georgia constitutional due process grounds).

Abstention is not necessarily appropriate if the relevant state constitutional provision "is the mirror of the federal one." Wright at 305; see also, Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, 426 U.S. 572, 598, 96 S.Ct. 2264, 2279, 49 L.Ed.2d 65 (1976). The relevant Georgia constitutional provision ⁴ does mirror the language of the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause, but the...