St. Paul Mercury Ins. Co. v. Williamson, 01-30648.

• Decision Date: 27 May 2003
• Docket Number: No. 02-30215.,No. 01-30648.,No. 02-30298.,No. 01-30879.,01-30648.,01-30879.,02-30215.,02-30298.
• Citation: 332 F.3d 304
• Parties: ST. PAUL MERCURY INSURANCE COMPANY; et al., Plaintiffs, Haynes Best Western of Alexandria; H. L. Haynes; American General Insurance Co.; Maryland Casualty Co.; HL&H Holding Co., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Sonya WILLIAMSON, Individually and on behalf of her minor children; Robert T. Williamson, Individually and on behalf of his minor children, Defendants-Appellants, Abner Williamson, Appellant. St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company; et al., Plaintiffs, Haynes Best Western of Alexandria Inc.; H. L. Haynes, Mr.; H. L. Haynes, Mrs.; American General Insurance Co.; Maryland Casualty Co.; HL&H Holding Co., Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees, v. Sonya Williamson, Etc.; et al., Defendants, Sonya Williamson, Individually and on behalf of her minor children; Robert T. Williamson, Individually and on behalf of his minor children, Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants, and Abner Williamson; Dixie Williamson, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 304

332 F.3d 304

ST. PAUL MERCURY INSURANCE COMPANY; et al., Plaintiffs, Haynes Best Western of Alexandria; H. L. Haynes; American General Insurance Co.; Maryland Casualty Co.; HL&H Holding Co., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Sonya WILLIAMSON, Individually and on behalf of her minor children; Robert T. Williamson, Individually and on behalf of his minor children, Defendants-Appellants, Abner Williamson, Appellant.

St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company; et al., Plaintiffs, Haynes Best Western of Alexandria Inc.; H. L. Haynes, Mr.; H. L. Haynes, Mrs.; American General Insurance Co.; Maryland Casualty Co.; HL&H Holding Co., Plaintiffs-Appellants-Cross-Appellees, v. Sonya Williamson, Etc.; et al., Defendants, Sonya Williamson, Individually and on behalf of her minor children; Robert T. Williamson, Individually and on behalf of his minor children, Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants, and Abner Williamson; Dixie Williamson, Appellants.

No. 01-30648.

No. 01-30879.

No. 02-30215.

No. 02-30298.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

May 27, 2003.

W. Gerald Gaudet (argued), Jeremy Ashley Hebert, Voorhies & Labbe, Lafayette, LA, Robert Emmett Kerrigan, Jr. (argued), Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles, New Orleans, LA, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Terrance Gilroy Reed (argued), Alexandria, LA, for Defendants-Appellants.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

Before JONES, WIENER, and DeMOSS, Circuit Judges.

WIENER, Circuit Judge:

The case before us must be the nadir in a seemingly unending series of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits in federal and state courts over the past thirteen years. In this latest iteration, Sonya and Robert Williamson ("the Williamsons"), appeal from a district court's order preliminarily enjoining them from prosecuting one of the many actions they have filed in Louisiana state court against St. Paul Mercury Insurance Co. ("St. Paul"), Haynes Best Western of Alexandria Inc. ("Haynes Best Western"), Best Western International ("BWI"), H.L. Haynes, Mrs. H.L. Haynes, American General Insurance Co. ("American General"), and Maryland Casualty Co. ("Maryland") (collectively, "the insurance parties").¹ For their part, the insurance parties have cross-appealed the district court's denial of their request for a permanent injunction against the Williamsons in this same state action. As we determine that the district court properly refused to issue a permanent injunction against the Williamsons, which makes the district court's preliminary injunction against the Williamsons moot, we affirm.

I. FACTS and PROCEEDINGS

The genesis of this appeal is a 1990 lawsuit that the Williamsons filed in Louisiana state court against the insurance parties (the "original lawsuit"). In that lawsuit, the Williamsons alleged that Sonya Williamson suffered injuries resulting from an electrical shock that she purportedly incurred while all were living at the Haynes Best Western in Alexandria, Louisiana. In September 1994, a jury found that Sonya Williamson was injured, but that the injuries arose from a staged accident or fraud. The state trial court entered judgment in favor of the insurance parties, a Louisiana Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in January 1997,² and the Louisiana Supreme Court denied the Williamsons' writ applications in June 1997.

Harken back to November 1993. While the original lawsuit was pending in the state trial court, St. Paul filed suit in federal district court against the Williamsons, claiming violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ("RICO"),³ and alleging fraud and conspiracy under Louisiana law (the "RICO suit"). St. Paul alleged that the Williamsons had a lengthy and well-documented history of purposefully defrauding insurance companies through the filing of claims based on staged accidents and non-existent injuries. The Williamsons promptly reconvened against St. Paul; they also separately sued all of the insurance parties, making identical claims for violations of RICO and Louisiana fraud and conspiracy statutes. The RICO suit and the Williamsons' counter-lawsuits were consolidated; and, on pre-trial motions, the district court dismissed all claims, except one: It granted summary judgment to St. Paul on its claim against the Williamsons for malicious prosecution.⁴ The district court set the case for trial solely on the issue of damages. In November 1997, a jury awarded damages of $411,166.56 to St. Paul. The Williamsons appealed the malicious prosecution judgment, and St. Paul appealed the dismissal of its RICO claims.

Now back to November 1995, when the RICO suit was still pending in the district court and the original lawsuit was proceeding through the state appellate courts. The Williamsons filed a petition in Louisiana state court invoking Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure ("LCCP") article 2004 to annul the judgment in the original lawsuit that found Sonya Williamson's injuries to be the result of either a staged accident or fraud (the "nullification suit"). Under LCCP article 2004, a "final judgment obtained by fraud or ill practices may be annulled."⁵ Although the nullification suit remained dormant for several years, it was revived when the Williamsons filed a third supplemental and amending petition in March 1998.

This revival apparently prompted the insurance parties to file a new complaint in federal district court to enjoin the state nullification suit (the "injunction suit"). In it, the insurance parties contended that the Williamsons — via the nullification suit — were attempting to relitigate the district court's judgment in the RICO suit (which dismissed the Williamsons' claims against the insurance parties). In October 1998, the district court issued a preliminary injunction enjoining the Williamsons from litigating the nullification suit in state court (the "first preliminary injunction"). The Williamsons timely appealed.

As the two appeals from the RICO suit and the appeal from the injunction suit derived from the same set of facts (and prior lawsuits), we consolidated them in 1999. In August 2000, we issued our first opinion in this epic, vacating in part and affirming in part the various judgments of the district courts.⁶ Specifically, in the RICO suit, we affirmed the dismissal of the Williamsons' claims, but vacated the judgment in favor of St. Paul on its malicious prosecution claim; we also vacated in part the district court's dismissal of St. Paul's RICO claims against the Williamsons. In the injunction suit, we vacated the first preliminary injunction against the Williamsons, which had prevented them from prosecuting their nullification suit in state court.

Of relevance here is the portion of our August 2000 judgment that vacated the district court's first preliminary injunction. The district court had agreed with the insurance parties that the Williamsons were attempting to relitigate the dismissal of their claims in the RICO suit, which permitted the court to issue an injunction under the relitigation exception in the Anti-Injunction Act.⁷ We held that the relitigation exception in the Anti-Injunction Act was inapplicable; noting that, under Louisiana law, a nullification action could be based on either fraud or ill practices.⁸ Although we recognized that the district court "considered and adjudged the issue of fraud" in the RICO suit, we also recognized that the record revealed that "the district court did not actually litigate an ultimate issue of fact that precludes the possibility of litigating the issue of ill practices and the corresponding nullification claim."⁹ Thus, we concluded that on remand the district court could enjoin the Williamsons from relitigating the issue of fraud in the nullification suit as grounds for annulling the judgment under LCCP article 2004, but that it could not enjoin the Williamsons from prosecuting the nullification suit based on their claim that the insurance companies engaged in ill practices, the other nullification ground under that article.¹⁰

We thus remanded the case to the district court, and the insurance parties promptly filed a motion for a permanent injunction against the Williamsons to prevent them from further prosecuting the nullification suit. Before a hearing could be held on the insurance parties' request for a permanent injunction, however, the Williamsons returned to the state courts in search of a default judgment in the nullification suit. After some palpable forum shopping, the Williamsons eventually convinced a judge in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans to issue an order, ex parte, granting them a default judgment.¹¹ This effectively nullified the judgment in favor of the insurance parties in the original lawsuit.¹²

When the insurance parties discovered what the Williamsons had done, they responded by filing (1) a motion in state court requesting a new trial and (2) motions in district court requesting sanctions and a contempt order against the Williamsons. In April 2001, the district court held hearings on the insurance parties' motions the result was another preliminary injunction, which effectively enjoined the enforcement of the default judgment in the nullification suit (the "second preliminary injunction"). The Williamsons timely filed a notice of appeal.

While the Williamsons' appeal was pending before us, the state court that had issued the default judgment continued proceedings apace, ignoring the second preliminary injunction. In May 2001, the state court denied the insurance parties' motion for a new trial. The insurance parties thus returned to the district court and requested that the second preliminary injunction be amended to cover any state appellate proceedings. In June 2001, the district court agreed, expanding the scope of the second preliminary injunction accordingly.

The Williamsons petitioned us for a writ of mandamus to order the district court to vacate the second preliminary...