# Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco Inc.

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 6, 1987 · 481 U.S. 1

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9430906

## Case

- **Full name:** Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco Inc.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 6, 1987
- **Citations:** 481 U.S. 1; 55 U.S.L.W. 4457; 107 S. Ct. 1519; 95 L. Ed. 2d 1; 1987 U.S. LEXIS 1515
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Scalia
- **Judges:** Powell, Rehnquist, White, O'Connor, Scalia, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens
- **Cited by:** 1,819 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9430906

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining the assumption that federal claims 4 Indeed, the Supreme Court has held that “[f]amily relations are a traditional area of state concern.” Moore v. Sims, 442 U.S. 415, 435 (1979). 5 To the contrary, the Minnesota Court of Appeals on numerous occasions has addressed …
- holding that while Younger abstention is only justified if the pending state proceeding has the authority to adjudicate a litigant’s federal claims, “when a litigant has not attempted to present his federal claims in related state-court proceedings, a federal court should assu…
- holding that “Younger abstention [is applicable] not only when the pending state proceedings are criminal, but also when certain civil proceedings are pending, if the State’s interests in the proceeding are so important that exercise of the federal judicial power would disrega…
- finding that lower court should have abstained from deciding the issue before the court; however, in recognizing the propriety of federal abstention, the Court also implicitly recognized that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine did not bar the district court’s federal jurisdiction to …
- holding that, so long as challenges to the process by which state judgments are obtained relate to pending state proceedings, “proper respect for the ability of state courts to resolve federal questions presented in state-court litigation mandates that the federal court stay i…

## Opinion text

Justice Scalia,
with whom Justice O’Connor joins, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court. I write separately only to indicate that I do not believe that the so-called Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprives the Court of jurisdiction to decide Texaco’s challenge to the constitutionality of the Texas stay and lien provisions. In resolving that challenge, the Court need not decide any issue either actually litigated in the Texas courts or inextricably intertwined with issues so litigated. Under these circumstances, I see no jurisdictional bar to the Court’s decision in this case.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9430906. Public record. Not legal advice.