dealing with a “pending” state civil action and decided prior to Wooley, supra
How later courts described this case
- dealing with a “pending” state civil action and decided prior to Wooley, supra
- propriety of § 1983 claim in federal court to enforce full faith and credit obligation against state judge not questioned, but abstention deemed warranted
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
McCREE, Circuit Judge (concurring).
I concur in the decision of the court, which requires the permanent injunction to be vacated.
I agree with Part V of the majority opinion, because the issuance of an injunction directed personally against two state court judges and two state court employees was, on the facts of this case, an improper interference in the operations of the state courts. See Smith v. Martin, 542 F.2d 688 (6th Cir. 1976). The complaint against them should have been dismissed.
I do not believe, however, that the allegations in the complaint set forth a violation by the remaining defendant, Russell Brown, of 28 U.S.C. § 1738 and of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, Art. IV, § 1, cognizable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . A private party like Brown who initiates in a state court an action that may be subject to the defense of res judicata does not thereby violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause, which imposes a duty only upon the state. Because we have determined that the defendants who are judicial officers and their supporting personnel may not, on these facts, be properly enjoined, and because the complaint does not state a claim against the private defendant under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ,1 would reverse the judgment of the district court.
Accordingly, I find it unnecessary to discuss the applicability of the doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 , 91 S.Ct. 746 , 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), and Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592 , 95 S.Ct. 1200 , 43 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975), to injunctions against the maintenance of purely civil actions to which the state or its agents are not parties. Cf. Louisville Area Interfaith Committee for United Farm Workers v. Nottingham Liquors, Ltd., 542 F.2d 652 (6th Cir. 1976). Nor is it necessary to decide whether there is a relitigation exception to the Younger-Huffman doctrine, as there is a relitigation exception to the doctrine’s statutory analogue, the federal anti-injunction statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2283 .