Cruz-Berrios v. Gonzalez Rosario

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 08-2458
JOSE JULIAN CRUZ BERRÍOS,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
CARLOS GONZÁLEZ-ROSARIO, WILLIAM CLASS-QUIRÓS, RAFAEL OLIVER
BAEZ, MIGUEL ORTIZ-MARRERO, ENIL MONTALVO-MORALES, SANTOS
JIMÉNEZ-COLÓN, ERICK GARCÍA-SANTOS, EDDIE M. CRUZ-
SANTIAGO,SERGEANT UZZIEL RUIZ-LEDEÉ, SERGEANT REINALDO
SURÉN,SERGEANT OSVALDO RIVERA-DOMÍNGUEZ, FNU O'FARRILL, JAMIE
LÓPEZ, JORGE SILVESTRINI, JORGE RODRÍGUEZ, MIGUEL PEREIRA and
WILMER SEPÚLVEDA,
Defendants, Appellees.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO
[Hon. Francisco A. Besosa, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Lynch, Chief Judge,
Boudin and Howard, Circuit Judges.
Victor J. Quiñones, Edgardo Cartagena, Ramon E. Dapena and
Usera Morell Bauza Dapena & Cartagena, LLP, on brief for appellant.
Irene S. Soroeta-Kodesh, Solicitor General, Leticia Casalduc-
Rabell, Deputy Solicitor General, Zaira Z. Girón-Anadón, Deputy
Solicitor General, and Michelle Camacho-Nieves, Assistant Solicitor
General, Department of Justice, on brief for appellees.
December 16, 2010
HOWARD, Circuit Judge. José Julian Cruz-Berríos, an
inmate currently serving a sentence under the jurisdiction of the
Puerto Rico Department of Corrections, brought a federal civil
rights action against various corrections officers whom he alleges
exerted excessive force against him. The district court dismissed
the action after determining that it was precluded as res judicata
by his previous, unsuccessful state suit based on similar alleged
conduct.1 Cruz-Berríos v. Gonzalez-Rosario, 577 F. Supp. 2d 561(D.P.R. 2008). Cruz-Berríos now appeals. After review, we affirm
in part, reverse in part, and remand the case to the district court
for further development of the record and clarification on matters
of Puerto Rico law.
I.
In March 2004, Cruz-Berríos filed a lawsuit in the Puerto
Rico Court of First Instance under Article 1802 of the P.R. Civil
Code, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 31 § 5141, alleging that officers in the
Puerto Rico correctional facility where he was housed had assaulted
him in retaliation for implicating them in a drug trafficking
investigation. His complaint referred to two separate incidents of
abuse, one on November 9, 2002, and another on February 28, 2004.
1
Puerto Rico is the functional equivalent of a state for all
purposes relevant to this case. Accordingly, we refer here to
state actions and state courts, notwithstanding Puerto Rico's
unique commonwealth status. See, e.g., R.G. Fin. Corp. v. Vergara-
Nunez, 446 F.3d 178, 183 n.2 (1st Cir. 2006).
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Shortly after initiating that action, Cruz-Berríos also
filed a complaint in federal district court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
making similar allegations. Some, though not all, of the named
defendants in the federal complaint were also defendants in the
state court case. Cruz-Berríos twice amended the federal
complaint, each time adding a new incident that he claimed had
occurred after the most recent filing.2 In the first amended
complaint, he added additional corrections officers and
administrators as defendants and included a third assault that had
allegedly occurred on August 18, 2004, which he claimed was part of
the same general pattern of retaliation as the original two
incidents. In the second amended complaint, he alleged a fourth
such incident, which he claimed occurred on March 2, 2005, and
added another prison administrator as a defendant.3 Of these four
alleged incidents, only the claims concerning the last three were
permitted to proceed, as the district court determined that the
claim arising out of the November 2002 incident was time-barred.4
Due to developments in the state court case, however,
those three claims did not proceed very far. After a bench trial,
2
At no point did Cruz-Berríos amend his state complaint.
3
In order to avoid a sovereign immunity bar, he also specified
that any claims for damages were against the defendants in their
personal capacities, while any injunctive relief sought was against
the defendants in both their personal and official capacities. See
Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 664–65 (1974).
4
Cruz-Berríos does not challenge this conclusion on appeal.
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the Court of First Instance entered judgment against Cruz-Berríos,
finding that no excessive use of force had been used on either of
the dates discussed in the state complaint (November 2002 and
February 2004) and that he had failed to show that he had been
singled out for retaliatory persecution or harassment. That
adverse judgment, the federal district court later held, precluded
the § 1983 action in its entirety, including the allegations
against the additional defendants concerning incidents that had not
previously been the subject of litigation. The district court
dismissed the case, and this appeal ensued.
II.
The defendants ask us to affirm on two separate bases.
They primarily argue that we may rely on the district court's
preclusion rationale, which is subject to de novo review. Ramallo
Bros. Printing, Inc. v. El Dia, Inc., 490 F.3d 86, 89 (1st Cir.
2007). Offering an alternative means to the same end, they also
assert that Cruz-Berríos failed to exhaust his administrative
remedies before filing his federal claim, in violation of 42 U.S.C.
§ 1997e(a). Because the second of these arguments may provide an
uncomplicated means of resolving this case on a more developed
record, we begin there.
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A.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 ("PLRA"), 42
U.S.C. § 1997e(a), provides that "[n]o action shall be brought with
respect to prison conditions under section 1983 of this title, or
any other Federal law, by a prisoner confined in any jail, prison,
or other correctional facility until such administrative remedies
as are available are exhausted." This exhaustion requirement
applies to allegations of physical violence by prison guards.
Porter v. Nussle, 534 U.S. 516, 532 (2002).
The defendants contend that dismissal is warranted here
because the complaint fails to indicate whether or not Cruz-Berríos
has exhausted his administrative remedies. But it was not Cruz-
Berríos's burden to plead exhaustion, which must be raised and
proved by the defense. Jones v. Bock, 549 U.S. 199, 216 (2007).
Although the defendants have now raised the issue, neither they nor
Cruz-Berríos have pointed to any evidence in the record that would
indicate one way or the other whether the exhaustion requirement
has in fact been satisfied. And because the district court
dismissed the case on preclusion grounds, it never addressed the
matter. Accordingly, we remand the case to the district court for
additional fact-finding as to whether the PLRA exhaustion
requirement bars Cruz-Berríos's suit or not. If so, it would
obviate any further need to consider the preclusive effect of the
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Court of First Instance's decision. But this is the defendants'
burden to prove.
B.
A final judgment on a matter may, in certain
circumstances, prevent that matter's re-adjudication in a
subsequent case. The doctrine of res judicata5 "relieve[s] parties
of the cost and vexation of multiple lawsuits, conserve[s] judicial
resources, and, by preventing inconsistent decisions, encourage[s]
reliance on adjudication." Allen v. McCurry, 449 U.S. 90, 94
(1980). Because "[u]nder the full faith and credit statute, 28
U.S.C. § 1738, a judgment rendered in a state court is entitled to
the same preclusive effect in federal court as it would be given
within the state in which it was rendered," In re Sonus Networks,
Inc., 499 F.3d 47, 56 (1st Cir. 2007), we look to Puerto Rico law
in order to determine the res judicata implications of the Court of
First Instance's judgment.
Puerto Rico's law of res judicata is codified at P.R.
Laws Ann. tit. 31, § 3343, which provides that a prior judgment
5
Depending on the speaker's intention, the term "res judicata"
may refer either to the doctrine of claim preclusion specifically
(coupled with "collateral estoppel" as a synonym for issue
preclusion) or else to the doctrines of claim and issue preclusion
collectively. We here use the phrase in the second sense. See
Taylor v. Sturgell, 128 S. Ct. 2161, 2170 n.5 (2008) (explaining
that the broad meaning of res judicata as an umbrella term that
encompasses both claim preclusion and issue preclusion "ha[s]
replaced a more confusing lexicon").
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will have preclusive effect when there is "the most perfect
identity between the things, causes, and persons of the litigants,
and their capacity as such." This provision encompasses both of
the two traditional aspects of res judicata: claim preclusion and
issue preclusion. Coors Brewing Co. v. Mendez-Torres, 562 F.3d 3,
19 (1st Cir. 2009). Under Puerto Rico's res judicata scheme, claim
preclusion "binds parties from litigating or relitigating any claim
that was or could have been litigated in a prior adjudication and
prevents claim splitting," Gener-Villar v. Adcom Group, Inc., 417
F.3d 201, 205 (1st Cir. 2005) (per curiam) (internal brackets
omitted); issue preclusion, on the other hand, "forecloses
relitigation in a subsequent action of a fact essential for
rendering a judgment in a prior action between the same parties,
even when different causes of action are involved." Id. at 205–06.
The three claims presented to us on appeal, corresponding
to the final three alleged incidents of abuse, fall into two
categories.6 The February 2004 incident has already been the
subject of actual litigation in the Court of First Instance. The
August 2004 and March 2005 incidents, on the other hand, have not.
The district court concluded that this distinction was irrelevant
and that all three claims were subject to issue preclusion. Citing
the rule that "a plaintiff cannot avoid the bar of [issue
6
Cruz-Berríos claimed four separate incidents of abuse in his
second amended complaint, but because the first of these claims was
time-barred, our review extends only to the final three.
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preclusion] simply by suing a defendant for continuing the same
conduct that was found to be lawful in a previous suit brought by
the same plaintiff,"7 Ramallo Bros. Printing, Inc., 490 F.3d at
91, the court held that no material differences existed between any
of the alleged incidents of abuse because the plaintiff presented
them as part of a "continuing pattern of violation." Cruz-Berríos,
577 F. Supp. 2d at 564 (emphasis in original). As a result, to the
extent that the first set of incidents was found to be lawful in
the state case, the second set of incidents would also be lawful as
a matter of issue preclusion.
We disagree. The distinction between the claims already
adjudicated and those not already adjudicated remains critical
here. It is therefore necessary to unravel the individual
allegations that the district court viewed as part of a single
whole.
1.
To begin with, issue preclusion does not apply to the
events that the Court of First Instance never expressly or
implicitly considered. The alleged August 2004 and March 2005
7
Cruz-Berríos correctly observes that this principle is taken
from a case concerning federal, rather than Puerto Rico, issue
preclusion principles. He does not, however, offer any authority
one way or the other as to whether Puerto Rico law encompasses an
analogous rule. Because we ultimately conclude that the principle
is inapposite to this situation anyway, we will assume without
deciding that Puerto Rico law mirrors federal law on this point.
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beatings, which appeared for the first time in the federal case,
are independent events that are far too fact-specific to lend
themselves to generalization as "the same conduct" examined in the
state case. That the Court of First Instance held Cruz-Berríos's
treatment in prison to be lawful on certain occasions does not
necessarily dictate as a matter of issue preclusion that his
treatment on subsequent occasions must be held lawful as well. Cf.
Dawkins v. Nabisco, Inc., 549 F.2d 396, 397 (5th Cir. 1977)
(holding under federal res judicata principles that a dismissal of
a Title VII retaliation claim could not preclude claims of
subsequent retaliation because otherwise "a company that had once
won a suit alleging retaliation for participation in Title VII
proceedings would be free to retaliate at will against the earlier
plaintiff without fear of being held accountable for its
actions."). At this juncture, it is impossible to tell whether the
conduct newly alleged in the federal case would turn out to be
meaningfully different from the conduct tried on the merits in the
state case. Further proceedings may establish that the new
allegations are simply more of the same, or they may turn out to be
something more egregious.
The defendants argue that insofar as Cruz-Berríos has
chosen to present the individual incidents as part of a continuing
pattern of abuse, the issue posed by the new claims is actually
identical to the one already adjudicated in state court. The
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response is that this is not necessarily so. It discounts the fact
that there are two more alleged incidents of beatings later. It
also discounts the possibility that Cruz-Berrios's rights were
violated in at least one instance, creating potential liability for
at least some defendants regardless of whether there is a pattern.
At the same time, even if issue preclusion does not
apply to these newly alleged incidents, claim preclusion
nevertheless might apply. The district court indicated that Cruz-
Berríos should have amended his state complaint to reflect these
two new incidents, which arose before his state case went to
trial.8 Cruz-Berríos, 577 F. Supp. 2d at 564. The court did not
indicate the source of this rule, and while the defendants
understandably defend it on appeal, they similarly provide no
authority for it. It is true that some jurisdictions employ a rule
that a party is obligated, on pain of preclusion, to amend a
complaint to reflect events that postdate the commencement of the
action. See, e.g., Monterey Plaza Hotel Ltd. P'ship. v. Local 483
of Hotel Employees, 215 F.3d 923, 928 (9th Cir. 2000) (applying
California law that "the doctrine of res judicata bars the
relitigation of all events which occurred prior to entry of
judgment, and not just those acts that happened before the
8
Although the district court portrayed this as a matter of
issue preclusion, we think it is actually one of claim preclusion,
which, unlike issue preclusion, can bar a matter that has not yet
been actually litigated.
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complaint was filed."). But other jurisdictions do not impose such
a burden on plaintiffs, see, e.g., Doe v. Allied-Signal, Inc., 985
F.2d 908, 915 (7th Cir. 1993), and there is no reason to assume
conclusorily what Puerto Rico's rule may be. Because this issue
has not yet been briefed, we think it best to remand the case to
the district court, where the parties may have a chance to argue
whether Puerto Rico law would apply claim preclusion to post-
complaint events that could have been but were not raised through
an amended complaint.
2.
We turn then to the preclusion of the federal claim
concerning the February 2004 incident, which the Court of First
Instance did adjudicate on the merits. Cruz-Berríos contends that
this claim was not precluded, notwithstanding the state court's
adjudication of the same facts, because the res judicata statute's
requirements of "perfect identity between the things, causes, and
persons of the litigants" have not been met. For the most part at
least, he is mistaken. As we shall explain, an underdeveloped
record prevents us from making a less qualified statement.
i.
Cruz-Berríos sued all of the federal action defendants in
both their official and personal capacities. We can immediately
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resolve the official-capacity claim. Cruz-Berríos first posits
that the parties are not identical inasmuch as his federal action
contains new defendants. Yet the Puerto Rico res judicata
statute's "perfect identity of parties" clause does not demand a
literal identity; it operates, rather, as a privity requirement.
R.G. Fin. Corp. v. Vergara-Nunez, 446 F.3d 178, 185–86 (1st Cir.
2006); Perez-Guzman v. Gracia, 346 F.3d 229, 234 (1st Cir. 2003).
This means that the clause is satisfied whenever "one party acts
for or stands in the place of another in relation to a particular
subject matter," R.G. Fin. Corp., 446 F.3d at 187, or, in the
Puerto Rico Supreme Court's words, whenever those parties amount to
the same "party really interested." Puerto Rican Independence
Party v. Commonwealth Elections Comm'n, 20 P.R. Offic. Trans. 607,
632 (1988).
That condition is satisfied here. Traditionally,
"[t]here is privity between officers of the same government so that
a judgment in a suit between a party and a representative of the
[government] is res judicata in relitigation of the same issue
between that party and another officer of the government."
Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, 310 U.S. 381, 402–03
(1940); see also Barclay v. Lowe, 131 F. App'x 778, 779 (2d Cir.
2005) (applying the privity principle to state corrections officers
sued in their official capacities for allegedly assaulting an
inmate). As stated, Puerto Rico law treats such privity between
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parties as identity. With respect to the plaintiff's official-
capacity claim based on the February 2004 allegations, the
representative roles of the defendants in this action are the same
as those in the state action. The parties in the official-capacity
suit are therefore perfectly identical to the parties in the prior
litigation. See Del Carmen Tirado v. Dep't of Educ., 296 F. Supp.
2d 127, 134 (D.P.R. 2003) (noting that official-capacity claims
against officers in the Puerto Rico Department of Education were
barred by res judicata, notwithstanding those officers' nonparty
status in a prior state suit).
Cruz-Berríos next avers that the "things" and "causes"
are not identical because his federal claim arises under § 1983,
while his state claim arose under a state tort statute. As we have
discussed elsewhere, this sort of argument "mistakes the legal
cause of action for the factual 'cause' contemplated by Puerto
Rico's preclusion statute: preclusion requires an identity of the
latter, not the former." Baez-Cruz v. Municipality of Comerio, 140
F.3d 24, 30 (1st Cir. 1998). Thus, regardless of the legal vehicle
through which an action is brought, claims share a perfect identity
of cause "when they flow from the same principal ground or origin."
R.G. Fin. Corp., 446 F.3d at 183. So long as the claims "either
were or could have been asserted in a prior action" based on the
same transaction, they are precludable. Id. Similarly, "[t]wo
actions share an identity of 'things' if a decision in the second
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action might function to contradict a right arisen or arising from,
or a right affirmed by a prior decision." Id. (internal brackets
and quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, "a mere difference in
the legal theories on which two causes of action are grounded does
not destroy the identity of thing or cause that otherwise exists
between two suits arising out of a common nucleus of operative
fact." Id. at 184. This all amounts to what is known in common
law jurisdictions as the "transactional approach" to claim
preclusion. Id. at 183.
Here, Cruz-Berríos's federal claim entails the same
factual cause as was dealt with in the analogous claim in his state
suit, namely, the officers' conduct on February 28, 2004; the
§ 1983 theory of liability could have originally been raised in his
state suit, Acevedo v. Srio. Servicios Sociales, 12 P.R. Offic.
Trans. 317 (1982); and a finding of liability in his federal suit
would necessarily contradict the Court of First Instance's
determination that the corrections officers acted lawfully. The
thing and cause, like the identity of the parties, are identical.
Thus, Cruz-Berríos's state suit precludes his current official-
capacity claim against the defendants concerning the events in
February 2004.
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ii.
Cruz-Berríos's personal-capacity claim, on the other
hand, is not so neatly resolved. Although the capacity in which
the defendants are sued does not affect the identities of thing and
cause, there is some possibility that it would affect the identity
of the parties. At the outset, we note our skepticism that Puerto
Rico law would allow a plaintiff who lost against one defendant to
then bring a new claim against another defendant (to say nothing of
a claim against the same defendant merely in a different capacity)
based on the same transaction where the outcome in the first case
effectively negates the claim in the second. Were such
relitigation permissible, a plaintiff could in principle have as
many bites of the apple as there were non-privy defendants to be
sued. This is precisely the sort of outcome that defensive non-
mutual issue preclusion typically guards against.
At the same time, we are not in a position to convert
that instinctive skepticism into an authoritative statement that
Puerto Rico law would dispense with its mutuality requirement under
these circumstances. So far as we can glean, the case law does not
definitively foreclose the possibility that Puerto Rico would
require mutuality even under these circumstances. We therefore
proceed with caution, and will await further development of the
case, before making any definitive statement as to which result
Puerto Rico law intends. On remand, the parties and the district
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court should devote some attention to this issue if it proves
necessary to resolve the case.
If the personal-capacity claims are indeed subject to
non-mutual issue preclusion, then the February 2004 claim would be
barred as to all defendants, and nothing more need be said. If, on
the other hand, it turns out that a mutuality requirement does
prevent preclusion against such newly named personal-capacity
defendants, we would need to take the further step of looking to
see who was named in the state suit. It is clear that at least
some of the newly named defendants were included in the federal
complaint solely because of the August 2004 and March 2005 claims.9
Subject to our earlier discussion of post-complaint events, the
Court of First Instance's decision would not appear to preclude
those claims against those defendants.10
Thus, a strict mutuality requirement would necessitate a
complete tally of who was named in the first suit. Unfortunately,
the record before us contains none. Its only reference to the
parties before the Court of First Instance occurs in a
9
So far as we can tell from our reading of the second amended
complaint, these defendants are: William Class-Quirós, Santos
Jiménez-Colón, Eddie M. Cruz-Santiago, Erick García-Santos, Enil
Montalvo-Morales, Osvaldo Rivera-Domínguez, and Wilmer Sepúlveda.
10
This conclusion, which follows from Puerto Rico's "identity
of parties" requirement, seems inconsistent with the extension of
res judicata to post-complaint events, even those involving
nonparties, as the district court appears to have assumed. But we
leave it to the litigants and the district court on remand to
consider in the first instance what the actual state of the law is.
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nonexhaustive list appearing in a Puerto Rico appeals court's
recitation of facts in the underlying case. Although the list
mentions some defendants by name, it also adds the cryptic phrase
"and others."11 Because we cannot divine the identity of those
others, we can only speculate as to who may be shielded by res
judicata and who may not. At the very least, any individual
clearly named as a personal-capacity defendant in the state case
would be able to preclude Cruz-Berríos's claim concerning the
events of February 2004.12 Any other individual who wishes to reap
the benefit of claim preclusion would have the opportunity on
remand to present the district court with evidence that he, too,
was a personal-capacity defendant in the state case.13 On this
11
It is possible that this phrase was meant as a John Doe–style
placeholder for as-yet unidentified defendants. If so, then it
would raise a question as to whether res judicata principles would
allow Cruz-Berríos for the first time in his federal complaint to
fill in who these "others" were. We have previously expressed
doubt that a party's presence as a John Doe defendant in one suit
would preclude subsequent claims against it as a named party in a
future suit, see Iantosca v. Step Plan Servs., Inc., 604 F.3d 24,
30 (1st Cir. 2010), but the question would ultimately be governed
by Puerto Rico law, which might have a different take. In any
case, because the reference to "others" could easily mean named
defendants, rather than John Does, the question may yet turn out to
be academic.
12
These defendants are Carlos González-Rosario, Miguel Pereira,
Uziel Ruiz-Ledée, and Reinaldo Surén.
13
To the extent that a personal-capacity defendant in the
federal suit was named only as an official-capacity defendant in
the state action, we again defer a definitive ruling. Some courts
have found privity elastic enough to be asserted defensively by a
government official who, after prevailing in an official capacity,
is later sued personally. See 18A Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R.
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issue, like exhaustion under the PLRA, the defense bears the burden
of proof. Perez-Guzman v. Garcia, 346 F.3d 229, 234 (1st Cir.
2003). But we stress again that all of this becomes necessary only
if Puerto Rico's "identity of parties" rule would not allow
defensive non-mutual issue preclusion on these facts.
III.
In summary, our holding varies by claim, by defendant,
and by capacity. First, we remand for the district court to
consider whether Cruz-Berríos failed to exhaust all administrative
remedies available to him before initiating his federal action.
Resolution of that issue has the potential to dispose of the entire
action without need for further consideration of the res judicata
questions.
As to the February 28, 2004, incident, we affirm the
district court's dismissal of the official-capacity claim against
all defendants; we also affirm the district court's dismissal of
the personal-capacity claim against those defendants already named
as personal-capacity defendants in the state case; but as to the
personal-capacity claim against those defendants whose party status
in the state case remains unclear, we reverse the dismissal and
Miller & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4458,
at 570-71 & n.21 (2d ed. 20002). But this question must be decided
under Puerto Rico law and is thus another matter for attention in
the district court in the first instance, if necessary.
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remand for such further consideration as this opinion requires.
Similarly, as to the claims concerning the events of August 18,
2004, and March 2, 2005, we reverse the dismissal and remand so
that the district court may, again depending on the resolution of
the exhaustion issue, consider whether Puerto Rico law would
preclude claims arising out of post-complaint events that could
have been but were not incorporated into the state case through an
amended complaint.
Each party shall bear its own costs of appeal.
So ordered.
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