Georges Marciano v. Elizabeth White

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION MAY 09 2011
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS U .S. C O U R T OF APPE ALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
GEORGES MARCIANO, an individual, No. 09-56897
Plaintiff - Appellant, D.C. No. 2:09-cv-03437-MMM-AJW
v.
MEMORANDUM *
HONORABLE ELIZABETH A. WHITE,
an individual,
Defendant - Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Margaret M. Morrow, District Judge, Presiding
Submitted May 2, 2011 **
Pasadena, California
Before: SILVERMAN, TALLMAN, and CLIFTON, Circuit Judges.
Georges Marciano appeals from the dismissal of his complaint against Judge
Elizabeth White of the California Superior Court. We affirm.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
Marciano’s complaint alleged that Judge White violated his constitutional
rights while presiding over a lawsuit brought by Marciano in state court against
former employees. In particular, Marciano claims that Judge White violated his
constitutional rights when she entered default judgment against him and
subsequently awarded the defendants significant damages on their cross-complaint
against Marciano. The district court dismissed Marciano’s federal suit on the
alternative grounds that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine and that the Younger abstention doctrine applied.
We begin by noting that Marciano has failed to state a claim for injunctive
relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which precludes injunctive relief against a judicial
officer for actions taken in her official capacity “unless a declaratory decree was
violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.” 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Marciano does
not claim that a declaratory decree was violated nor is there any indication that
declaratory relief is unavailable. For this reason alone, we would affirm the district
court’s dismissal of the complaint. See Evans v. Chater, 110 F.3d 1480, 1481 (9th
Cir. 1997) (A reviewing court “may affirm on any ground finding support in the
record, even if the district court relied on the wrong grounds or wrong reasoning.”
(internal quotation marks omitted)).
2
We also approve of the district court’s dismissal under the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine. Marciano’s complaint is, by its own terms, precisely the kind of legal
action meant to be barred from federal court by the Supreme Court’s Rooker-
Feldman decisions. Marciano claims that Judge White’s decisions defaulting him
and awarding damages against him caused him injury by violating his
constitutional rights, and he seeks injunctive relief overturning those decisions. In
other words Marciano’s federal suit is a “case[] brought by [a] state-court loser[]
complaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the
district court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and
rejection of those judgments.” Exxon Mobile Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp.,
544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005); see also Bianchi v. Rylaarsdam, 334 F.3d 895, 898 (9th
Cir. 2003) (“Bianchi essentially asked the federal court to review the state court’s
denial in a judicial proceeding and to afford him the same individual remedy he
was denied in state court.” (internal citations and quotation marks omitted)). The
current action is outside the usual range of Rooker-Feldman cases only in being so
direct – it is a lawsuit against the state court judge herself, not simply a claim
purporting to run against the same adversaries in the state court lawsuit.
Marciano has argued that Rooker-Feldman cannot apply because there has
not been a final state court decision in his case. Marciano points to pending state
3
court appeals, which he argues must be concluded before Rooker-Feldman can
apply. We disagree. The fact that Marciano filed his federal suit before his state
court appeals have concluded cannot be enough to open the door for a federal
district court to review the state court decisions. To hold otherwise would run
counter to the doctrine’s underlying principle that review of state court decisions
must proceed through the state appellate procedure and then to the United States
Supreme Court. See Exxon, 544 U.S at 292. That the California Supreme Court
has not yet resolved Marciano’s claim does not mean Marciano can redirect that
review so that it will be conducted by a federal district court.
Furthermore, Marciano’s reliance on Exxon and our opinion in Mothershed
v. Justices of Supreme Court, 410 F.3d 602, 604 n.1 (9th Cir. 2005), is
unconvincing. Exxon dealt with very different factual situation: parallel state and
federal litigation. Here, by contrast, Marciano has not simply filed an action in
federal court against the defendants in his state court action. Rather, he has
brought suit against the judge who presided over his state court action seeking to
overturn her decisions. In Mothershed, we held that Rooker-Feldman was
applicable to a suit almost identical to Marciano’s: a federal suit against state
judges raising federal claims that “constitute[d] a particularized challenge to the
[state] proceedings’ results.” 410 F.3d at 607-08. While Mothershed discussed the
4
finality requirement, we did not consider whether a ruling by a lower state court
was sufficiently final because the state bar disciplinary proceedings at issue were
handled by the state’s highest court. In the current context, we conclude that the
state court’s decisions are sufficiently final to support the dismissal of the federal
action under Rooker-Feldman.
We also agree with the district court’s dismissal under the Younger
abstention doctrine, though based upon somewhat different reasoning. In order for
Younger abstention to apply to a civil case the proceedings must “implicate
important state interests.” Middlesex County Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar
Assoc., 457 U.S. 423, 432 (1982). The district court concluded that questions
regarding the ethics and competence of a state court judge implicated an important
state interest.
Our case law may foreclose citing a challenge to the ethics and competence
of an individual state court judge based on her rulings in a single case as an
important state interest. See Miofsky v. Superior Court of State of California, 703
F.2d 332, 338 (9th Cir. 1983) (Younger abstention not proper when federal suit
only sought to “restrain the state judiciary from conducting private tort litigation in
a way that allegedly threatens to violate his constitutional rights.”). Additionally,
“a universal judicial interest,” such as a general interest in a fair and competent
5
judiciary, “is not the kind of ‘important state interest’ that animates the Younger
abstention doctrine.” AmerisourceBergen Corp. v. Roden, 495 F.3d 1143, 1150
(9th Cir. 2007). Rather, “[t]he goal of Younger abstention is to avoid federal court
interference with uniquely state interests such as preservation of these states’
peculiar statutes, schemes, and procedures.” Id.We conclude that this case does implicate another state interest that is
sufficiently important to warrant abstention under Younger, however. Marciano, in
essence, challenges the ability of Judge White to issue sanctions against him for
failing to comply with her discovery orders. The ability of a court to issue
sanctions “lies at the core of the administration of a State’s judicial system” and is
a unique state process “through which [the state] vindicates the regular operation of
its judicial system.” Juidice v. Vail, 430 U.S. 327, 335 (1977). Like the contempt
power at issue in Juidice and the attachment procedure at issue in Pennzoil, this
case “involve[s] challenges to the processes by which the State compels
compliance with the judgments of its courts.” Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 481
U.S. 1, 13-14 (1987). While Marciano only challenges the issuance of sanctions in
his case, “the importance of the interest is measured by considering its significance
broadly, rather than by focusing on the state’s interest in the resolution of an
individual case.” Baffert v. California Horse Racing Bd., 332 F.3d 613, 618 (9th
6
Cir. 2003). Looking broadly, we conclude that Marciano’s lawsuit implicates
California’s important interest in the use of sanctions to enforce judicial orders.
We find no merit to Marciano’s other arguments why Younger should not apply
here.
Having concluded that the district court properly dismissed the case upon
multiple independent grounds, it is unnecessary to consider other arguments.
AFFIRMED
7