Tindall v. Wayne County Friend of the Court
| Decision Date | 13 June 2001 |
| Docket Number | 99-2312,Nos. 99-2208,99-2319,s. 99-2208 |
| Citation | 269 F.3d 533 |
| Parties | (6th Cir. 2001) Michael E. Tindall, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Wayne County Friend of the Court, by: Joseph A. Schewe, Director of Legal Services; Alan E. Skrok, Staff Attorney; Assistant Friend of Court; Wayne County Sheriff's Department, by: Robert Ficano, Sheriff; Wayne County Circuit Court, Family Division, by: Kirsten Frank Kelly, Presiding Judge; Michael F. Sapala, Chief Judge, Defendants-Appellees. Michael E. Tindall, Plaintiff-Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. Wayne County Friend of the Court, by: Joseph A. Schewe, Director of Legal Services; Wayne County Sheriff's Department, by: Robert Ficano, Sheriff; Alan E. Skrok, Staff Attorney; Assistant Friend of Court, Defendants, : Kirsten Frank Kelly, Presiding Judge; Michael F. Sapala, Chief Judge, Defendants-Appellees/Cross-Appellants. Michael E. Tindall, Plaintiff-Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. Wayne County Friend of the Court, by: Joseph A. Schewe, Director of Legal Services; Alan E. Skrok, Staff Attorney, Defendants-Appellees/Cross-Appellants, Wayne County Sheriff's Dep't, et al.. UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT Argued: |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit. No. 98-73896, Denise Page Hood, District Judge.
Michael E. Tindall, TROMBLY TINDALL, Port Huron, Michigan, for Plaintiff.
Margery Moselle Mann, Janet E. LeAnnais, WAYNE COUNTY FRIEND OF THE COURT, LITIGATION SECTION, Ellen E. Mason, Robert S. Gazall, Department of Corporation Counsel for County of Wayne, Joseph C. Marshall, III, Kathleen A. Lang, Ann J. Foeller, DICKINSON, WRIGHT, MOON, VAN DUSEN & FREEMAN, Detroit, Michigan, for Defendants.
Before: RYAN and COLE, Circuit Judges; MARBLEY, District Judge.*
Attorney and divorce Michael E. Tindall is a noncustodial parent who has continually and inexplicably failed to comply with court orders requiring him to make support payments for his minor children. He has been the subject of at least eight enforcement proceedings to collect delinquent support payments, instituted under Michigan's Friend of Court Act, Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §552.501 et seq., and its Support and Visitation Enforcement Act, Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §552.601. Dissatisfied with the manner in which those proceedings were conducted, Tindall filed the instant action raising various federal claims. Named in Tindall's lawsuit are Defendants-Appellees the Wayne County Friend of the Court ("FOC"); the Wayne County Circuit Court, Family Division ("WCCC"); the Wayne County Sheriff's Department ("Sheriff's Department"); and individual defendants Joseph A. Schewe, Director of FOC Legal Services; Alan E. Skrok, FOC Staff Attorney; Robert Ficano, Sheriff, Wayne County Sheriff's Department; Kirsten Frank Kelly, Presiding Judge, WCCC; and Michael F. Sapala, Chief Judge, WCCC [all collectively referred to herein as "Defendants"].
Tindall appeals from the district court's grant in part of the motions to dismiss of Defendants-Appellees, specifically challenging the district court's application of the Younger v. Harris abstention doctrine to Counts III and VI of his complaint in refusing to determine the constitutionality of Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. §552.628 ("License Act"), which provides for the suspension of the occupational or driver's license of a delinquent child-support payer; and whether the FOC's failure to follow established policies for conducting referee and judicial hearings violated his right to due process. Tindall also assigns error to the district court's denial of his request for injunctive relief under the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1996, as to Counts IV and V of his complaint; and to the district court's alleged misapplication of the Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) standard in evaluating his claims.
Cross-Appellants the FOC and the WCCC raise challenges of the district court's grant in part of Tindall's motion for summary judgment and assert that: (1) the district court violated the Eleventh Amendment when it exercised subject-matter jurisdiction over Tindall's claims; (2) the post-complaint transfer of Tindall's divorce action to Macomb County Circuit Court rendered moot his claims, thus requiring us to vacate the district court's judgment in this case; (3)the district court erroneously concluded that Tindall had standing to assert the claims raised in his complaint; (4)the district court improperly refused to abstain from ruling on all of Tindall's claims; (5) the district court erred by permitting Tindall to proceed under the Declaratory Judgment Act; and (6) the district court, in granting Tindall's summary judgment motion, erroneously concluded that Defendants' procedures for issuing show cause orders and bench warrants were unconstitutional.1
This case presents a host of legal questions for our consideration. Because, however, we conclude that the district court properly should have abstained from reaching any of Tindall's claims, we decline to reach any issue except that pertaining to abstention. We therefore VACATE the order of the district court and REMAND this case with instructions to dismiss Tindall's complaint.
In December 1991, a divorce judgment issued in the Wayne County Circuit Court ending the marriage of Michael and Grace Tindall, pursuant to which, Tindall was ordered to make support payments for his two minor children. He repeatedly failed to make the required payments. Between October 1993 and April 1997, no fewer than five show cause orders issued ordering Tindall to answer for his failure to pay court-ordered child support. When Tindall failed to appear at these hearings, bench warrants issued immediately thereafter. Tindall alleges that the WCCC and the FOC violated their established procedures by pre-signing these show cause orders and bench warrants and by allowing them to be issued by nonjudicial officers.
A WCCC representative issued another show cause order on April 25, 1997, ordering Tindall to appear at a hearing to answer for his failure to comply with the court's previous child support order, which had resulted in the August 21, 1996, issuance of a bench warrant. Tindall failed to appear at this hearing and instead sent his attorney to inform the court that he had never received notice of the hearing and that he had not been made aware that a bench warrant for his arrest had issued until the morning of the hearing. FOC attorney Shelly Payne disputes this point. When further confusion developed at the hearing concerning who had authorized the issuance of the August 21, 1996, warrant and where that warrant was currently located, Payne drew up a new warrant, signed by Judge Giovan, requiring Tindall again to show cause why he should not be held in contempt.2
In response to the May 14, 1997, warrant, Tindall filed a Complaint for Superintending Control in the Michigan Court of Appeals, accompanied by an "Emergency Ex Parte Motion for Superintending Control and to Stay Enforcement of a Void Bench Warrant," in which Tindall objected to the procedures that had been employed during the pendency of his divorce action.3 Specifically, he challenged the manner in which show cause orders had been issued and how show cause hearings had been conducted and questioned the propriety of Judge Giovan's and Payne's continued participation in his divorce action. The Michigan Court of Appeals issued a summary order denying Tindall's Complaint for Superintending Control on May 22, 1997. Tindall filed a Complaint for Superintending Control in the Michigan Supreme Court on May 27, 1997, lodging the same grievances raised in the previous complaint filed in the Court of Appeals. In a June 5, 1997, order, the Michigan Supreme Court declined review of Tindall's petition on June 5, 1997.
Tindall's continued nonpayment of child support resulted in the issuance of additional show cause orders and bench warrants. Several hearings were held at which Tindall was required to demonstrate why he should not be held in contempt for his open defiance of the court's orders. On one such occasion, a WCCC judge held Tindall in contempt of court and ordered him incarcerated for forty-five days, or until he made a $2000 payment towards his child support obligations. Tindall complied with the court's order and avoided incarceration. Thereafter, on August 24, 1998, the FOC served Tindall with a notice informing him that on September 8, 1998, it would seek an order suspending his license to practice law for his failure to pay court-ordered child support. Tindall filed no motion to quash the notice, failed to appear at the hearing, and did not otherwise raise a challenge to it in state court, but proceeded instead to federal court to file the lawsuit presently before us.
Tindall initiated the instant lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on September 4, 1998. Tindall's complaint set forth four claims, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 and 28U.S.C. §2201, alleging that the License Act, which provides for the suspension of the driver's or occupational license of a delinquent child-support payer, is unconstitutional, both facially and as applied by the WCCC and the FOC (Count III); that the procedures employed by the WCCC and the FOC to initiate contempt proceedings are unconstitutional (Count IV); that the procedures utilized by the WCCC and the FOC to issue bench warrants are unconstitutional (Count V); and that WCCC's referee hearings and judicial hearings [collectively referred to herein as "contempt proceedings"] are unconstitutional for their failure to comply with Michigan Court Rules (Count VI). Tindall sought an order from the district courtdeclaring the contested statute and procedures unconstitutional; enjoining the named defendants from taking further action pursuant to the...
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