Lange v. City of Batesville ( 2005 )

United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
F I L E D
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT December 21, 2005
Charles R. Fulbruge III
Clerk
No. 05-60371
JULIA W. LANGE; DAVID L. LANGE; JAMES S. WHITAKER; ESTATE OF
JAMES S. WHITAKER, SR., by and through the Executrix of the
Estate, Joyce Whitaker,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
versus
CITY OF BATESVILLE,
Defendant-Appellee.
--------------------
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Mississippi
(2:01-CV-076-P-A)
--------------------
Before REAVLEY, DAVIS, and WIENER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Plaintiffs-Appellants the Langes and the Whitakers
(collectively “the Whitakers”) sued Defendant-Appellee the City of
Batesville, Mississippi (“the City”), asserting (1) claims under 42
U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of (a) the substantive and procedural
components of the Due Process Clause,1 and (b) the Takings Clause2;
and (2) pendent state law claims. The district court granted
*
Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that
this opinion should not be published and is not precedent except
under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH CIR. R. 47.5.4.
1
U.S. CONST. amend. XIV.
2
Id.summary judgment to the City, holding that under the doctrines of
issue preclusion and Rooker/Feldman, the final judgment of the
Mississippi Court of Appeals in Lange v. City of Batesville3
(“Lange I”) precluded relitigation of the dispositive question
underlying all claims asserted by the Whitakers. We affirm in
part, and vacate and dismiss in part.
I. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
A. The Agreement
The Whitakers and the City entered into an “Agreement for
Temporary Easement” (“the Agreement”) in which the Whitakers agreed
to transfer to the City an approximately five acre strip of land
carved from the edge of their property in exchange for the City’s
promise to build a “public road” on that land. The Agreement
states only that the City is obligated to build a “public road”
(“Whitaker Road”) on the Whitakers’ transferred property; it
neither specifies details of size, type, or qualities of the future
Whitaker Road, nor sets a time or date by which the road had to be
completed. The Whitakers assert, however, that “public road” means
more than simply any road open to the public —— they insist that it
means the City was obligated to build Whitaker Road as the primary
road in the vicinity of their remaining property. The City
disagrees. Its position is that the Agreement entitles the
Whitakers to a public road, but not to one of any particular size
3
832 So. 2d 1236 (Miss. Ct. App. 2002).
2
or other characteristics.
B. The City’s First Alleged Breach of the Agreement and the
Ensuing State and Federal Litigation
1. The City’s First Alleged Breach
In 2000, acting pursuant to the Agreement, the Whitakers
transferred approximately five acres of their land to the City for
the future construction of Whitaker Road. At that time, however,
the Whitakers were not the only parties advocating construction of
a road in the area near the Whitakers’ property: Wal-Mart had
decided to build a store on a parcel in the same vicinity, and it
lobbied the City to construct a road connecting its property to the
state highway running nearby. Wal-Mart’s lobbying efforts proved
successful, and, over the Whitakers’ objection, the City voted in
October 2000 to approve construction of a road on Wal-Mart’s
property (“House-Carlson Drive”).
To the Whitakers, the City’s approval of House-Carlson Drive
breached the Agreement by violating the City’s obligation to make
the future Whitaker Road the primary road in the vicinity of the
Whitakers’ property. To remedy this perceived breach, the
Whitakers took two parallel courses of action: (1) In October 2000,
they filed a bill of exceptions with the Mississippi Circuit Court
of Panola County,4 and (2) in April 2001, they filed the instant
4
In Mississippi, a bill of exceptions is the sole means
available for seeking to overturn the administrative action of a
municipality. The state court’s review “is limited to the record
created by the bill of exceptions.” Lange I, 832 So. 2d at 1239.
3
action in the Northern District of Mississippi, which the district
court stayed pending resolution of the state litigation.
2. State Court Litigation
In their state bill of exceptions action, the Whitakers
contended that by approving construction of House-Carlson Drive,
the City breached the Agreement. According to the Whitakers, this
breach rendered the City’s decision arbitrary and capricious and
thus reversible. The state action eventually reached the
Mississippi Court of Appeals, which, after full briefing and
argument, held that the City’s decision to build House-Carlson
Drive did not, in and of itself, breach the Agreement.5 But the
court declined to go any further in its ruling, reasoning that a
determination of the precise contours of the City’s obligations
under the Agreement would not be ripe for judicial decision until
the City either acted on its conceded obligation to build Whitaker
Road in some form or definitively declined to do so. The court did
note, however, that because the Agreement does not contain a time
limit within which Whitaker Road had to be completed, “[a]
That record “embodies the facts, judgment, and decision involved in
the Board proceedings.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).
The court may overturn the municipality’s action only if the
decision is not supported by substantial evidence, is arbitrary or
capricious, is beyond the power of the municipality to make, of if
the decision violates a constitutional right of the party
challenging the action. Bd. of Supervisors v. McCormick, 42 So. 2d
177, 179 (Miss. 1949).
5
Lange I, 832 So. 2d at 1240.
4
reasonable time for performance will . . . be implied.”6
3. Federal Court Litigation of the First Alleged Breach
The Whitakers then returned to federal court to pursue their
federal and pendent state law claims. In essence, the Whitaker’s
federal theory at this time was that the Agreement entitled them to
a “public road” built as the primary road in the area in
consideration for the approximately five acres of land that they
had transferred to the City. The Whitakers reasoned that by
authorizing construction of House-Carlson Drive —— and thus
allegedly breaching the Agreement by not giving the Whitakers that
to which they claimed entitlement —— the City (1) “took” the
Whitakers’ five acres without providing just compensation, (2)
deprived the Whitakers of their property without due process of
law, and (3) violated the Whitakers’ substantive due process
rights. We shall refer to this first group of taking and due
process claims as the “House-Carlson Drive claims.”
C. The City’s Second Alleged Breach of the Agreement and the
Ensuing Federal Litigation
In January 2004, while litigation of the House-Carlson Drive
Claims was pending in the district court, the City completed
construction of Whitaker Road. Not surprisingly, the Whitakers
were unhappy with the road that the City built. The Whitakers
concluded that the City had failed to construct the road within a
6
Id. at 1241.
5
reasonable time, as required by the time limitation implied by
Mississippi law in the absence of a specified time in the
Agreement. Rather than sue the City in state court for a separate
breach of the Agreement, however, the Whitakers stayed in district
court and argued that the City breached the Agreement by failing to
construct Whitaker Road within a reasonable time. The Whitakers
contended that this new breach of the Agreement also effected an
unconstitutional taking of their land without just compensation.7
We shall refer to this second distinct taking claim as the
“Whitaker Road Taking claim.”
D. The District Court’s Resolution of the Whitakers’ Claims
The Whitakers were thwarted once again when, in April 2005,
the district court granted summary judgment to the City on both the
Whitakers’ House-Carlson Drive claims and the Whitaker Road Taking
claim. The court first held that litigation of the House-Carlson
Drive claims was precluded by the state court’s judgment in Lange I
that in merely authorizing House-Carlson Drive, the City did not
breach the Agreement. The district court went on to hold that
litigation of the Whitaker Road Taking claim was also precluded,
not by the issue preclusive effect of the state court’s ruling, but
by the Rooker/Feldman doctrine.
7
The Whitakers did not argue to the district court, and do
not argue to us now, that the alleged breach of the Agreement
arising out of the timeliness of the City’s completion of Whitaker
Road violated their substantive or procedural due process rights.
6
II. ANALYSIS
A. Standard of Review
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment de
novo.8 When, as here, there is no genuine issue of material fact,
summary judgment is warranted “if . . . the moving party is
entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.”9
B. The House-Carlson Drive Claims
The success of the Whitakers’ House-Carlson Drive claims
hinges on whether the City’s authorization of House-Carlson Drive
constituted a breach of the Agreement. We may permit litigation of
that question here, however, only if Lange I is not entitled to
issue-preclusive effect. As we hold that Lange I is preclusive,
however, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment
to the City on the Whitakers’ House-Carlson Drive claims.
The preclusive effect of a state court judgment in a
subsequent federal action is governed by the Full Faith and Credit
Act.10 Under this statute, final judgments of state courts “have
the same full faith and credit in every court within the United
States and its Territories and Possessions as they have by law or
usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession from
8
Gowesky v. Singing River Hosp. Sys., 321 F.3d 503, 507 (5th
Cir. 2003).
9
FED. R. CIV. P. 56(c); see also Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477
U.S. 317, 322-23 (1986).
10
28 U.S.C. § 1738.
7
which they are taken.”11 In other words, we must accord preclusive
effect to the Lange I court’s final judgment if the law of issue
preclusion in Mississippi entitles the judgment to such effect in
that state’s courts. In addition, because this case requires us to
measure Lange I’s preclusive effect on the dispositive issue in
this § 1983 action, Lange I’s holding that the City’s authorization
of House-Carlson Drive did not breach the Agreement is preclusive
only if the Whitakers had a “full and fair opportunity to litigate
[that] . . . issue” before the state court.12 And when, as here,
the putatively preclusive judgment was rendered after only a
limited review by the state court of a state executive entity’s
action,13 the requirement that there have been a “full and fair
opportunity to litigate” is met only if the state proceedings
satisfied the minimum procedural requirements of the Due Process
Clause.14 Therefore, in determining the preclusive effect of Lange
I on the House-Carlson Drive claims, we must focus on two
questions: (1) Under Mississippi’s law of issue preclusion, must
other Mississippi courts give the judgment in Lange I preclusive
effect, and (2), if so, could a federal court give the judgment
such effect without violating the Due Process Clause?
11
Id.
12
Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 101 (1980).
13
See supra note 4.
14
Kremer v. Chem. Constr. Corp., 456 U.S. 461, 485 (1982).
8
1. Mississippi Law Requires Recognizing Lange I As Issue
Preclusive
In Mississippi, a prior court judgment precludes relitigation
of an issue if the issue was “actually litigated, determined by,
and essential to the judgment in [the] former action.”15 We are
convinced that under this rule, the district court properly
accorded preclusive effect to Lange I’s holding that the City’s
authorization of House-Carlson Drive, standing alone, did not
breach the Agreement. After all, the Whitakers themselves put that
question before the Lange I court by expressly arguing that “‘[t]he
City’s decision to abandon a contract . . . is arbitrary and
capricious.’”16 Having framed the issue this way, the Whitakers
invited the Lange I court’s holding: Despite the City’s
authorization of House-Carlson Drive, “no breach of [the City’s]
obligations [under the Agreement] has occurred.”17
In the context of this case, it is irrelevant that in Lange I
this dispositive question arose within the confines of the limited
review authorized by Mississippi’s bill of exceptions process
rather than in a full-blown breach-of-contract action. Like purely
legal issues that arise in a traditional common law contract action
—— the judicial resolution of which would undisputedly be issue
15
Dunaway v. W.H. Hopper & Assocs., 422 So. 2d 749, 751 (Miss.
1982); see also Raju v. Rhodes, 7 F.3d 1210, 1215 (5th Cir. 1993).
16
Emphasis added.
17
Lange I, 832 So. 2d at 1240 (emphasis added).
9
preclusive under Mississippi law18 —— questions of law in a bill of
exceptions action are resolved by the court de novo.19 And here,
the Lange I court faced only questions of law: (1) Whether the term
“public road” is ambiguous,20 which the court had to have decided
it is not,21 and (2) the application of this unambiguous contract
term to the undisputed facts of this case.22 There is therefore no
reason to conclude that the bill of exceptions context of Lange I
impinged on or otherwise restricted that court’s resolution of
these purely legal questions. Thus, it is a virtual certainty that
Mississippi courts would grant issue preclusive effect to the
Lange I court’s de novo resolution of these questions.
18
See Harris v. Bd. of Trs. of State Insts. of Higher
Learning, 731 So. 2d 588, 590 (Miss. 1999) (recognizing that the
doctrine of issue preclusion applies to contract actions if all
elements are met).
19
See Hinds County Bd. of Supervisors v. Leggette, 833 So. 2d
586, 590 (Miss. Ct. App. 2002).
20
See Neider v. Franklin, 844 So. 2d 433, 436 (Miss. 2003).
21
Although the Lange I court did not explicitly rule that the
term “public road” is unambiguous, the court must have found that
it was. Had the Lange I court viewed the term “public road” as
ambiguous, it would have had to complete the interim analytical
step associated with an ambiguous contract term —— an analysis of
extrinsic evidence pertaining to the term’s meaning. See Neider,
844 So. 2d at 436. But the court did not; instead, it ignored any
extrinsic evidence and enforced the Agreement as written. See Lange
I, 832 So. 2d at 1239-41. Under Mississippi law, such an
analytical process is associated with unambiguous contract terms;
the Lange I court therefore must have viewed “public road” as such
a term.
22
See Clark v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 725 So. 2d 779,
781 (Miss. 1998).
10
2. The Whitakers Waived the Argument that Finding Lange I To
Be Issue Preclusive Would Violate the Due Process Clause
In their opening brief, reply brief, and supplemental letter
brief, the Whitakers never advanced to us any reason to question
the constitutional adequacy of the Lange I proceedings. Instead,
the Whitakers impugned the non-judicial process afforded to them by
the City prior to its voting to authorize construction of House-
Carlson Drive. The sufficiency of that process, however, is
not before us today; in this issue preclusion analysis under the
Full Faith and Credit Act, we are concerned only with the adequacy
of the process afforded the Whitakers in the state courts.23 The
Whitakers have therefore waived any argument that our according
preclusive effect to Lange I would violate Due Process.24 We shall
assume that the process was adequate; and, because Mississippi law
requires according preclusive effect to Lange I’s holding that the
City’s authorization of House-Carlson Drive did not breach the
Agreement, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment
to the City on the Whitakers’ House-Carlson Drive claims.25
23
See Kremer, 456 U.S. at 485.
24
See Commc’n Workers of Am. v. Ector County Hosp. Dist., 392
F.3d 733, 748 (5th Cir. 2004); see also FED. R. APP. P. 28(a)(9)(A)
(stating that appellant’s brief must contain “appellant’s
contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the
authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant
relies”).
25
The Whitakers also argue that Lange I should not preclude
relitigation in this case because they were forced to bring their
breach of contract claim through Mississippi’s bill of exceptions
process. For two reasons, though, this argument is meritless.
11
C. The Whitaker Road Taking Claim: Ripeness
The district court resolved the Whitaker Road Taking claim on
the ground that federal litigation of the claim is prohibited by
the Rooker/Feldman doctrine. We need not address Rooker/Feldman’s
effect on this case, however, because the Whitaker Road taking
claim is not yet ripe for federal adjudication. Consequently, the
federal courts do not have subject matter jurisdiction to entertain
this claim.
Under the Takings Clause, a taking does not occur —— and,
thus, a taking claim is not ripe —— “until (1) the relevant
governmental unit has reached a final decision as to what will be
First, the Whitakers’ assertion is simply wrong: They were not
“forced” to bring their breach of contract claim through the bill
of exceptions process. Under Mississippi law, when a
municipality’s legislative action allegedly breaches a contract to
which the municipality is a party, the aggrieved party may eschew
the bill of exceptions process and bring a common law contract
action against the municipality. Cf. Bd. of Trs. of States Insts.
of Higher Learning v. Brewer, 732 So. 2d 934, 936-37 (Miss. 1999)
(permitting a breach of contract claim to be brought against a
state administrative agency outside of the limited administrative
review process); cf. Gulfside Casino P’ship v. Miss. State Port
Auth., 757 So. 2d 250, 255 (Miss. 2000). Second, as made clear by
the Supreme Court’s recent decision in San Remo Hotel, L.P. v. City
and County of San Francisco, California, even if the Whitakers
were forced to litigate the heart of their taking claim in state
court, that is not a reason to find that the Lange I decision is
non-preclusive:
As [the Supreme Court has] repeatedly held, . . . issues
actually decided in valid state-court judgments may well
deprive plaintiffs of the ‘right’ to have their federal
claims relitigated in federal court. This is so even
when the plaintiff would have preferred not to litigate
in state court, but was required to do so by statute or
prudential rules.
125 S. Ct. 2491, 2504 (2005) (citations omitted); see also id. at
2507.
12
done with the property and (2) the plaintiff has sought
compensation through whatever adequate procedures the state
provides.”26 The first ripeness prong was obviously satisfied: By
building Whitaker Road as it did, the relevant governmental unit ——
the City —— rendered a final decision regarding the Whitakers’
asserted property interest. But it is equally obvious that the
second prong has not been satisfied: The Whitakers have yet to seek
compensation through Mississippi’s procedures for this alleged
taking.27 The only takings claim for which the Whitakers have
sought compensation through state procedures —— and thus the only
takings claim in this case that is ripe —— is the House-Carlson
Drive taking claim.28 As the Whitaker Road Taking claim is premised
on an alleged breach of the Agreement that is wholly separate and
distinct from the breach alleged to underlie the House-Carlson
26
Sandy Creek Investors, Ltd. v. City of Jonestown, Texas, 325
F.3d 623, 626 (5th Cir. 2003) (emphasis added); see also Williamson
County Reg’l Planning Comm’n v. Hamilton Bank, 473 U.S. 172, 195-96
(1985).
27
The Whitakers have admitted that Mississippi’s procedures
are “adequate.” In their brief to us, the Whitakers discuss
Mississippi’s recognition of claims for inverse condemnation —— the
procedure by which “a land owner recovers just compensation for a
taking of his property when condemnation proceedings have not been
instituted.” Alternatively, the Whitakers could file a traditional
breach of contract action against the City, seeking as damages the
value of the land they deeded to the City and for which they claim
to have not been compensated.
28
The Whitakers’ filing of a bill of exceptions to challenge
the City’s authorization of House-Carlson Drive and their
subsequent litigation of that challenge up the Mississippi judicial
system rendered that claim ripe.
13
Drive claim, however, the Whitaker Road Taking claim alleges a
completely different taking of the Whitakers’ land. The ripening
of the House-Carlson Drive taking claim, therefore, did not ripen
the Whitaker Road Taking claim. Consequently, we vacate the
district court’s grant of summary judgment to the City on the
Whitaker Road Taking claim and dismiss it for lack of subject
matter jurisdiction. Our judgment is rendered without prejudice,
however, to the Whitakers’ right to seek compensation through
Mississippi’s adequate procedures for this purported taking.
III. CONCLUSION
We affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to
the City on the Whitakers’ House-Carlson Drive claims. We vacate
the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the City on the
Whitaker Road Taking claim, however, and dismiss this claim for
lack of subject matter jurisdiction, albeit we do so without
prejudice to the Whitakers’ entitlement to seek compensation
through Mississippi’s procedures.
AFFIRMED in part; VACATED and DISMISSED without prejudice in part.
14