Vistamar, Inc. v. Vazquez, Civ. No. 76-69.

• Decision Date: 28 December 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 76-69.
• Parties: VISTAMAR, INC., Plaintiff, v. Antonio Santiago VAZQUEZ et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

337 F. Supp. 375

VISTAMAR, INC., Plaintiff, v. Antonio Santiago VAZQUEZ et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 76-69.

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

December 28, 1971.

Rafael Vizcarrondo, of Fiddler, González & Rodríquez, San Juan, P. R., for plaintiff.

Jorge Martínez, San Juan, P. R., for the Government.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

CANCIO, Chief Judge.

This is an action filed by Vistamar, Inc. against the Planning Board of Puerto Rico, its Chairman, the Public Works Department of Puerto Rico and the Secretary of Public Works of Puerto Rico. Plaintiff alleges that the defendants have deprived it of its property without due process of law; that since 1962 the defendants have refused to either approve for development or expropriate certain parcels of land which are the property of the plaintiff; that its property has been "frozen" thereby rendering it useless, all without any compensation; that plaintiff has had to pay taxes on the property without being able to use it; and that these actions of defendants have caused plaintiff damages. It requests money damages and injunctive relief in the form of an order to defendants to either expropriate or release the land for development.

The action is based on the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C.A. §§ 1983-1985, alleging that the actions of defendants are unreasonable, oppressive and discriminatory, and have resulted in the deprivation of its property under color of state law. Jurisdiction is invoked under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331-1343 and the matter in controversy is said to exceed $10,000.

After several motions, the complaint was amended on May 28, 1967, so as to allege that plaintiff is a Puerto Rico corporation and substitute the present chairman of the Planning Board for his predecessor. Finally, on August 28, 1970, the complaint was dismissed as to the two agencies involved herein with the individual defendants remaining in the case.

The case is now before the Court on a motion for summary judgment filed by the remaining defendants on March 2, 1971, and a cross-motion for summary judgment and reply, filed by plaintiff on March 30, 1971.

It is defendants' contention that plaintiff has failed to exhaust the administrative remedies available to it; that the cases decided by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico in Heftler International, Inc. v. Junta de Planificación, 142 Colegio de Abogados, 1970, decided on December 15, 1970, P.R.R., and Ana Margarida Vda. de Iturrequi v. Junta de Planificación, 143 CA, 1970, decided on December 16, 1970, P.R.R., are dispositive of the issues herein; and that this Court should refrain from ruling to the contrary in deference to the Commonwealth courts.

Plaintiff alleges in turn that it does not have to exhaust the administrative remedies; that the Margarida and Heftler cases are not applicable herein; and that because of certain correspondence with employees of the agencies originally in the case, which the corporation has filed herein, further administrative proceedings would be fruitless. Plaintiff further submits that on the merits of unopposed affidavits submitted, judgment should be entered in its favor.

To put the issues into proper perspective, we wish to point out at the outset that in actions under the Civil Rights Act, it is the federal law which determines whether the exhaustion of state administrative remedies is required. This is a matter of federal law and policy since it goes to the access to be given to litigants to come into the federal courts under a federal statute. The decisions by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico serve only to illustrate the remedies that may be available to litigants; these decisions may determine whether the exhaustion of those remedies should be required only under the laws of Puerto Rico and not when the remedy sought is federal in nature.

Another factor which has caused confusion to the parties herein is the paragraph in this Court's decision in Inmobiliaria Borinquen, Inc. v. García Santiago, 295 F.Supp. 203 (1969), at page 206, which reads:

Another argument advanced in the motions to dismiss is that the Plaintiff has not exhausted administrative remedies allegedly available in the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth. In view of the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), McNeese v. Board of Education et al., 373 U.S. 668, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 10 L.Ed. 2d 622 (1963), and Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965), it seems clear that exhaustion of remedies in the state or Commonwealth jurisdiction is not a prerequisite to the invocation of the proper Federal jurisdiction in civil rights cases.

The time has come to inquire further into the problem of whether the exhaustion of state administrative remedies is required or not in civil rights cases. This is a complex issue and at this time cannot be summarized in one short paragraph.

As far back as 1939 the Supreme Court of the United States in Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 59 S.Ct. 872, 83 L.Ed. 1281 (1939) expressed that the judicial remedies of the states, vis a vis the administrative remedies, need not be exhausted before recourse is had to the federal courts. In Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), mentioned in the paragraph quoted from Inmobiliaria the court's manifestations as to the exhaustion of state remedies were directed to an allegation by defendants that a simple remedy was available to plaintiffs in the courts of the state. The Supreme Court stated that recourse to the state's remedies need not be had; that the purpose of the Act was not to require recourse to a theoretically adequate remedy which is not available in practice, and that the reason for the passage of the Civil Rights Act was that because of prejudice and bias, state laws might not be enforced. Monroe was concerned with judicial and not administrative remedies.

In McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 668, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 10 L. Ed.2d 622, cited in the paragraph from Inmobiliaria, the Supreme Court makes it clear that the assertion of a federal claim under the Civil Rights Act does not have to await an attempt to vindicate the claim in the state courts. Exhaustion of administrative remedies may be required when it is clear that the administrative remedy is sufficiently adequate to preclude prior resort to a federal court. The remedy in McNeese was found inadequate since all it could accomplish was to give plaintiffs a suit in the state courts.

The last case cited in the paragraph from Inmobiliaria is Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965), which is, in essence, the refusal by the Court to apply the abstention doctrine when a state statute has a chilling effect on first amendment rights and is of no aid to the understanding of the issues herein.

The cases that have cast doubt on the status of the doctrine of exhaustion of state administrative remedies are Damico v. California, 389 U.S. 416, 88 S.Ct. 526, 19 L.Ed.2d 647 (1967) (per curiam), King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 at 312 n. 4, 88 S.Ct. 2128, 20 L.Ed.2d 1118, and Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.S. 639, 88 S. Ct. 2119, 20 L.Ed.2d 1319. Damico was an appeal from a three-judge court's dismissal of a civil rights action for failure to exhaust adequate administrative remedies. The Court cited from McNeese as follows: "relief under the Civil Rights Act may not be defeated because relief was not first sought under state law which provided an administrative remedy," id., 373 U.S. at 671, 83 S.Ct. at 1435. See Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 180-183, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492.

As may be seen, the brackets are supplied by the Court, as is pointed out in the Second Circuit opinion in Eisen v. Eastman, 421 F.2d 560, 569 (1969), the McNeese opinion portion cited in Damico related to state judicial, not administrative remedies.

The note in King states that plaintiffs are not required to exhaust administrative remedies where the constitutional challenge to a statute is sufficiently substantial so as to require the convening of a three-judge court. Citing Damico, McNeese and Monroe, the Court in Houghton states that exhaustion of state administrative remedies is not required where, to be successful at the administrative level, it would require that the agency violate or derogate its own regulation. Said endeavor would be futile. Therefore, the Court found Damico controlling.

That these cases do not represent the end of the doctrine of exhaustion of state administrative remedies is illustrated in Eisen v. Eastman, where at pages 568 and 569, the Supreme Court cases are put in their proper perspective. After a careful analysis of the opinions, the Court concludes:

Despite the breadth of some of the language, particularly in the Damico per curiam, we thus read these decisions as simply condemning a wooden application of the exhaustion doctrine in cases under the Civil Rights Act. Exhaustion of state administrative remedies is not required where the administrative remedy is inadequate, as in McNeese, or where it is certainly or probably futile, as in Damico, Smith and Houghton. A quite different situation would be presented, for example, when a complaint alleged that a subordinate state officer had violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights by acting because of bias or other inadmissible reasons, by distorting or ignoring the facts, or by failing to apply a constitutional state standard, and the state has provided for a speedy appeal to a higher administrative officer, as New York City has done here. We shall need much clearer directions than the Court has yet given or, we believe, will give, before we hold that plaintiffs in such cases may turn their backs on state administrative remedies and rush into a federal forum, whether their actions fall under the Civil Rights Act or come under general federal question jurisdiction.

The First Circuit has referred...