Mandel v. Town of Orleans

• Citation: 326 F.3d 267
• Decision Date: 15 April 2003
• Docket Number: No. 03-1123.,03-1123.
• Parties: Sarah Fitzpatrick MANDEL, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. TOWN OF ORLEANS, et al., Defendants, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

326 F.3d 267

Sarah Fitzpatrick MANDEL, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. TOWN OF ORLEANS, et al., Defendants, Appellants.

No. 03-1123.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard April 8, 2003.

Decided April 15, 2003.

Thomas P. Campbell with whom Samuel Perkins and Brody, Hardoon, Perkins & Kesten LLP were on brief, for appellants.

Elizabeth M. Clague, for appellee.

Before BOUDIN, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and HOWARD, Circuit Judges.

BOUDIN, Chief Judge.

This is an appeal from a preliminary injunction issued by the district court against the Town of Orleans, Massachusetts, its police chief, and two individual officers prohibiting specific actions by them. The injunction was obtained by Sarah Mandel incident to a civil rights suit brought by her against the defendants, but its origin lies in divorce and custody litigation between Sarah Mandel and her husband Marc Mandel that resulted in a Maryland state court custody order adverse to Sarah Mandel. This order in turn led to enforcement and related proceedings in Massachusetts state court, also resolved described hereafter.

For present purposes, an abbreviated history of events will suffice. Sarah and Marc Mandel married in May 1997. They lived in Maryland (Marc is a state prosecutor) and had two children: Ava, now four years old, and John, now three years old. In June 2001, after discord, Sarah took the children to Orleans, Massachusetts, and filed for divorce and custody of the children in the Circuit Court of Baltimore County, Maryland. By agreement, temporary custody was awarded to Sarah with visitation by Marc.

Thereafter, Sarah claimed that Marc, during an agreed visit with the children in Massachusetts on February 3, 2002, had sexually abused John, a charge Marc vigorously denied.¹ Sarah reported this allegation to the Orleans police and, on February 5, 2002, obtained a temporary protective order from the state district court in Orleans. A week later, after a hearing, the state court vacated the order. After the children were interviewed, the state authorities did not pursue any charge against Marc.

Later in February, Sarah filed in the Barnstable Probate and Family Court (Orleans is in Barnstable County) a request for custody of the children and a protective order; the request was denied, the denial affirmed by the Appeals Court, and an appeal is now before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In May 2002, Sarah returned to the Maryland court asking it to modify its prior custody order and, in June, Marc asked the court to hold Sarah in contempt for violating the original visitation provisions.

Proceedings in the Maryland court during the summer of 2002 included an order holding Sarah in contempt, a trial scheduled for July on permanent custody postponed to August at Sarah's request, her failure to appear for a scheduled deposition, and finally her attorney's withdrawal on the day of trial in August on grounds he said that ethics restrictions forbade him to reveal. After hearing witnesses from Marc (Sarah did not appear), the court awarded him custody. In a strongly worded opinion, the court described Sarah as a "pathological" or "purposeful" liar who "will do and say anything" including "falsely accuse Marc of sexual abuse...."

Marc immediately returned to Massachusetts to secure custody. He obtained from the Barnstable Probate and Family Court an ex parte order to enforce his Maryland judgment, which directed the Orleans Police Department to assist Marc in obtaining custody of the children. Sarah, apparently avoiding the police, sought temporary relief from the same state court, which denied her application. After providing Sarah a further chance to surrender the children, the police charged Sarah with kidnaping. Sarah is currently awaiting trial on these charges and is serving a home detention sentence for civil contempt in Massachusetts for failing to disclose the whereabouts of Ava Mandel to the Barnstable County Probate and Family Court.

On September 3, 2002, Sarah filed the present civil rights action in state court against the Town of Orleans, its police chief, and other officers, charging that they had violated her rights under the federal constitution and state law. The gist of the complaint was that the police had selectively enforced the laws, first by refusing to prosecute Marc for child abuse and by helping him get custody of the children and second by seeking to arrest her for refusing to comply with the custody order. She sought both an injunction, including temporary relief, and damages. The defendants removed the case to federal district court.

The federal district court held eleven days of hearings between October 8 and November 18, 2002, hearing testimony from witnesses including Sarah. Marc, prudently as it turned out, did not intervene. In the middle of the hearings, the Scituate Police Department located John Mandel and turned him over to Marc. The next day, October 30, 2002, the district court issued an order prohibiting the defendants "and anyone acting in concert or in aid of the defendants" from (1) removing the children from Massachusetts without the permission of the district court and (2) "taking any action that interferes in any way with the plaintiff's appearance before this court" pending the hearings.

On December 9, 2002, the district court said that it was denying Sarah's request for an injunction but it also directed that its October 30, 2002, order remain in effect. Mandel v. Town of Orleans, 233 F.Supp.2d 232, 239, 241 (D.Mass.2002). The court rejected without detailed discussion the defendants' jurisdictional and related objections to its involvement. Id. at 234. The defendants appealed from the district court's December 9 order and, after concluding provisionally that this was an appealable order, this court expedited the appeal. On March 6, 2003, the district judge — after refusing defendants' earlier request that he recuse himself — ordered that the case be reassigned.

At the threshold of this appeal, we conclude that the injunctive relief granted by the district court is immediately appealable. The injunction explicitly restrains the defendants from taking two different sets of actions; it was entered without limitation of time (temporary restraining orders are limited to ten days); and it is therefore appealable as the grant or continuation of a preliminary injunction. 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1) (2000); Sierra Club v. Marsh, 907 F.2d 210, 212-13 (1st Cir. 1990).²

Turning then to the injunction, we begin with that branch of the order that prohibits the Orleans Police Department or anyone acting in concert with them from removing the children from Massachusetts. The defendants first argue that this part of the injunction is barred by the domestic relations exception to federal court jurisdiction. This exception prohibits federal courts from issuing or altering "divorce, alimony, and child custody decrees." Ankenbrandt v. Richards, 504 U.S. 689, 703, 112 S.Ct. 2206, 119 L.Ed.2d 468 (1992).

The doctrine where it applies governs claims over child custody even where they are cloaked in the "trappings" of another type of claim. Congleton v. Holy Cross Child Placement Agency, Inc., 919 F.2d 1077, 1078-79 (5th Cir.1990). However, the courts are divided as to whether the doctrine is limited to diversity claims and this court has never decided that issue.³ The debate is esoteric but, as federal law increasingly affects domestic relations, one of potential importance. We need not resolve the issue here because this branch of the injunction more clearly offends another broader constraint on federal court authority.

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine — with certain exceptions (e.g., habeas corpus) — precludes a lower federal court from entertaining a proceeding to reverse or modify a state judgment or decree to which the assailant was a party. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923); D.C. Ct. of App. v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983). Although res judicata doctrine would often achieve similar effects, Rooker-Feldman is at least quasi-jurisdictional, Picard v. Members of the Employee Retirement Bd., 275 F.3d 139, 145 (1st Cir.2001), premised on the rule that among federal courts only the U.S. Supreme Court has authority to invalidate state civil judgments. Although sometimes minimized by scholars, cf. Chemerinsky, Federal Jurisdiction § 8.1, at 450 (3d ed.1999), the doctrine is widely used by the federal court to prevent end-runs around state judgments.

Rooker-Feldman applies whether or not the federal and state causes of action are technically the same for purposes of claim preclusion, see, e.g., Maple Lanes, Inc. v. Messer, 186 F.3d 823, 825 (7th Cir.1999), cert. denied 528 U.S. 1118, 120 S.Ct. 939, 145 L.Ed.2d 817 (2000), or whether all of the familiar conditions for issue preclusion are met. See, e.g., Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 28 (1982). It is not necessary that the federal action formally seek to invalidate the state judgment; it is enough if the federal action would in substance defeat or negate a state judgment, for example if "the federal claim succeeds only to the extent that the state court wrongly decided the issues before it." Hill v. Conway, 193 F.3d 33, 39 (1st Cir.1999) (quoting Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 25, 107 S.Ct. 1519, 95 L.Ed.2d 1 (1987) (Marshall, J., concurring)); see also Garry v. Geils, 82 F.3d 1362, 1369 (7th Cir.1996).

In this case, the first branch of the injunction frustrates both the Maryland custody decree, which awarded Marc permanent custody of the two children, and the Massachusetts enforcement order, which implemented the Maryland decree in Massachusetts. To begin with the Maryland decree, it awarded Marc custody after a proceeding to determine which parent should have custody of the children and the decree certainly contemplated that Marc was entitled to have the children live...