Pue v. Sillas

• Decision Date: 25 June 1980
• Docket Number: No. 77-3412,77-3412
• Citation: 632 F.2d 74
• Parties: Douglas R. PUE, an Individual on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Herman SILLAS, Jr., an Individual and as Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, et al., Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 74

632 F.2d 74

Douglas R. PUE, an Individual on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Herman SILLAS, Jr., an Individual and as Director of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, et al Defendant-Appellee.

No. 77-3412.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

June 25, 1980.

Anne E. Steele, San Mateo, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

Gordon Zane, Deputy Atty. Gen., San Francisco, Cal., argued, Elizabeth Ann Coyne, Deputy Dist. Atty., Redwood City, Cal., on brief, for defendant-appellee.

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

Before WALLACE and SNEED, Circuit Judges, and SOLOMON, ^* District Judge.

WALLACE, Circuit Judge:

Pue appeals from a district court judgment abstaining from the exercise of jurisdiction and dismissing Pue's civil rights action against officers of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and officers of the counties of San Francisco and San Mateo (government). We find that the district judge abused his discretion in ordering abstention in this case, and we reverse.

I.

Pue owned an automobile registered in California in his own name. In April 1974 he allegedly sold it to Stanley Travis, ¹ who failed to register it. Between April 12, 1974, and January 21, 1977, police ticketed the automobile on many occasions for parking violations in the city and county of San Francisco. Because Travis did not register the car, the citations were all charged to Pue. Nevertheless, because Travis had exclusive possession of the car, Pue did not have notice of any of the tickets placed on the vehicle's windshield.

Sometime before January 21, 1977, the Clerk of the San Francisco Municipal Court issued at least four "Notice(s) of Intent to Issue Warrant" in Pue's name. The notices were all sent to Pue's address listed on the DMV's registration records for the automobile. Pue asserts that he did not receive any of the notices, because he moved several times between April 1974 and January 1977, and, he contends, the post office did not forward the notices to his new addresses. On the evening of January 21, 1977, Pue was stopped for a traffic violation by officers of the police department in Foster City, California. While Pue was detained, the officers ran a routine check and learned of four outstanding arrest warrants. Even though Pue offered to explain that he no longer owned the car, he was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the Foster City Police Department. He was held there until removed to the San Mateo County Jail, where he was searched, stripped, booked, fingerprinted, photographed, and incarcerated.

Pue brought this class action, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, and 1985, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1343 for money damages, and declaratory and injunctive relief. Pue asserts that the statutory and administrative scheme under which he was incarcerated for someone else's criminal acts, about which he had no notice and over which he had no control, violates the United States and California Constitutions. He alleges specifically that Cal.Veh.Code § 41102 ² (which provides that proof that a vehicle is illegally parked, plus proof that the defendant was the vehicle's registered owner, constitutes prima facie evidence that the defendant violated the Vehicle Code) raises a presumption of guilt which is unconstitutional under both constitutions. Furthermore, Pue alleges that section 41103 ³ (which sets forth the procedures for notifying defendants of Vehicle Code violations covered by section 41102, and of outstanding arrest warrants for such violations) violates the due process provisions of both constitutions.

II.

The district judge abstained on the basis that the federal constitutional issues raised by Pue "might be mooted or presented in a different posture by a state court determination of pertinent state law." Deferral to state court on this basis is generally called Pullman abstention, after the landmark case in which it was first employed, Railroad Comm'n v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). ⁴ The district judge observed that few California courts have interpreted sections 41102 and 41103 of the Vehicle Code, and that no California case has considered the validity of the statutory presumption in section 41102 in light of recent Supreme Court decisions relating to the use of presumptions in criminal prosecutions. He further stated that no California court has considered the validity of the notice procedure in section 41103. We must consider whether these factors justify abstention in this case.

The decision to abstain "involves a discretionary exercise of a court's equity powers." Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 375, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 1324, 12 L.Ed.2d 377 (1964); see Railroad Comm'n v. Pullman Co., supra, 312 U.S. at 500, 61 S.Ct. at 645. Thus, "(t)he test we apply in reviewing district court abstention decisions is whether there has been an abuse of discretion." Santa Fe Land Improvement Co. v. City of Chula Vista, 596 F.2d 838, 839 (9th Cir. 1979); Sederquist v. City of Tiburon, 590 F.2d 278, 281 n.5, 283 (9th Cir. 1978); Rancho Palos Verdes Corp. v. City of Laguna Beach, 547 F.2d 1092, 1095 (9th Cir. 1976). A reviewing court will find an abuse of discretion only when there is " 'a definite and firm conviction that the court below committed a clear error of judgment in the conclusion it reached upon a weighing of the relevant factors.' " Anderson v. Air West, Inc., 542 F.2d 522, 524 (9th Cir. 1976) (quoting States S.S. Co. v. Philippine Air Lines, 426 F.2d 803, 804 (9th Cir. 1970) and In re Josephson, 218 F.2d 174, 182 (1st Cir. 1954)). See also Premium Service Corp. v. Sperry & Hutchinson Co., 511 F.2d 225, 229 (9th Cir. 1975) ("a judge abuses his discretion only when his decision is based on an erroneous conclusion of law or where the record contains no evidence on which he rationally could have based that decision").

Discretion, however, must be exercised within such limits as the applicable law prescribes. These limits may be broad or narrow, general or specific. With respect to abstention the limits tend toward the narrow and the specific. Thus the Supreme Court has stated that the doctrine of abstention

is an extraordinary and narrow exception to the duty of a District Court to adjudicate a controversy properly before it. Abdication of the obligation to decide cases can be justified under this doctrine only in the exceptional circumstances where the order to the parties to repair to the state court would clearly serve an important countervailing interest.

County of Allegheny v. Frank Mashuda Co., 360 U.S. 185, 188-89, 79 S.Ct. 1060, 1063, 3 L.Ed.2d 1163 (1959). See Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat'l Union, 442 U.S. 289, 99 S.Ct. 2301, 2313, 60 L.Ed.2d 895 (1979); Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51, 54, 94 S.Ct. 303, 306, 38 L.Ed.2d 260 (1973); Lake Carriers Ass'n v. MacMullan, 406 U.S. 498, 509, 92 S.Ct. 1749, 1756, 32 L.Ed.2d 257 (1972); Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 248-49, 88 S.Ct. 391, 395-96, 19 L.Ed.2d 444 (1967). Our circuit has identified three conditions which, when conjoined, present the exceptional circumstances required for Pullman abstention:

(1) The complaint "touches a sensitive area of social policy upon which the federal courts ought not to enter unless no alternative to its adjudication is open."

(2) "Such constitutional adjudication plainly can be avoided if a definitive ruling on the state issue would terminate the controversy."

(3) The possibly determinative issue of state law is doubtful.

Canton v. Spokane School Dist. No. 81, 498 F.2d 840, 845 (9th Cir. 1974) (footnote omitted) (quoting Railroad Comm'n v. Pullman Co., supra, 312 U.S. at 498, 61 S.Ct. at 644).

It is especially crucial that the third criterion an uncertain issue of state law be satisfied. The Supreme Court has said:

"The paradigm of the 'special circumstances' that make abstention appropriate is a case where the challenged state statute is susceptible of a construction by the state judiciary that would avoid or modify the necessity of reaching a federal constitutional question." Kusper v. Pontikes, supra, (414 U.S.) at 54, 94 S.Ct., at 306; see Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 249, 88 S.Ct. 391, 396, 19 L.Ed.2d 444 (1967); Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167, 176-177, 79 S.Ct. 1025, 1030, 3 L.Ed.2d 1152 (1959); Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). Of course, the abstention doctrine "comtemplates that deference to state court adjudication only be made where the issue of state law is uncertain." Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 534, 85 S.Ct. 1177, 1182, 14 L.Ed.2d 50 (1965). But when the state statute at issue is "fairly subject to an interpretation which will render unnecessary or substantially modify the federal constitutional question," id., at 535, 85 S.Ct., at 1182, abstention may be required "in order to avoid unnecessary friction in federal-state relations, interference with important state functions, tentative decisions on questions of state law, and premature constitutional adjudication," id. at 534, 85 S.Ct., at 1182.

Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat'l Union, supra, 99 S.Ct. at 2313 (emphasis supplied). The assumption which justifies abstention is that a federal court's erroneous determination of a state law issue may result in premature or unnecessary constitutional adjudication, and unwarranted interference with state programs and statutes. But when the state law issues are crystal clear, the minimal risk of erroneous determination does not justify the "exceptional" step of abstaining. Because we find that there are no doubtful state law issues in this case, we hold that the district judge's decision to abstain was an abuse of discretion. ⁵

The challenged statutes are perfectly clear. Vehicle Code § 41102 quite plainly establishes that evidence that a defendant is the registered owner of a vehicle constitutes...