There is a saying in the legal profession - "hard cases make bad law".
Yet, what the U.S. Court of Appeals did recently (even though for wrong reasons) was not bad law, it was good law.
While bending over backwards to save a corporate giant Chevron, successor in interest to Texaco, from a $9+ BILLION judgment affirmed by the Ecuadoran court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit actually paved the way to civil rights litigation and opened the door to civil rights plaintiffs formerly barred from access to the federal court with their lawsuits by the so-called Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
I have written many times about the Rooker-Feldman doctrine on this blog - you can read all blog posts dedicated to this subject by putting the words "Rooker-Feldman" in the search window on the right of the blog.
It is a judicially created doctrine barring jurisdiction of federal courts (the courts say) because the federal constitutional issues raised in a particular civil rights lawsuit were already raised (or COULD be raised, but were not, in a state court proceeding).
Never mind that the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1983, does not mandate civil rights plaintiff to raise any issues in a state court proceedings, and thus not raising such issues in a state proceeding does not constitute a waiver of a federal statutory right to sue for civil rights violations.
Never mind that the doctrine leaves civil rights plaintiffs no chance to sue in federal courts at all and thus practically eliminates the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1983, because, according to the doctrine, victims of civil rights violations either HAVE TO raise federal constitutional issues in the prior state court proceedings - and will be then barred from raising those issues in federal court, whether they did actually raise such issues in the state court proceedings or not.
Through the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal judges re-wrote the Civil Rights Act, in violation of their restricted authority under Article III and while usurping the exclusive power of the U.S. Congress to legislate under Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
Federal courts in the U.S. so far religiously applied the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, tossing thousands of civil rights cases every year - because, in the federal courts' unanimous opinions, "losers" (the language of the federal court "test") in state court proceedings must not be allowed to complain about what state courts did to them - even what state courts did to them was biased, unconstitutional and corrupt.
Corrupt.
That's a key word now.
Because, just to save a corporation from a $9 billion dollar judgment, the 2nd Circuit carved out an exception to the Rooker-Feldman bar to its JURISDICTION and now claimed that it can impose an injunction on enforcement of that judgment because allegedly the proceedings in the Ecuadoran court were corrupt.
I will analyze in separate blogs the 497-page (!) decision of the district court affirmed by the 127-page opinion of the 2nd Circuit - and especially the order denying judicial notice of certain documents, issued by the 2nd Circuit after the 127-page opinion.
Since there are over 2,000 pages of documents involved, I will certainly have to take my time to review all this extremely interesting case, to get to the bottom of what made the 2nd Circuit carve out an exception in its usually cemented-tight claim that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine precludes losers in other courts to come in front of the 2nd Circuit complaining of that loss, for any reasons whatsoever.
The 2nd Circuit also disregarded the doctrine of comity, giving full faith and credit to judicial decisions of other countries - and it is especially interesting how the 2nd Circuit could exercise jurisdiction where the litigated events occurred in another country.
It is very interesting that the district court dedicated 497 pages to its opinion justifying the unjustifiable - denying legitimacy to a final judgment from another country.
Imagine what will be the long-ranging consequences to U.S. businesses outside of the United States after this decision - if American companies violate local laws and pollute local environments of foreign countries, and then American courts block court decisions of those foreign countries awarding judgments for recovery of victims of those environmental (or other) violations - why do business with American companies at all?
As to the 127-page opinion of the 2nd Circuit - the zeal of the 2nd Circuit is especially amazing since the same court is notorious for tossing civil rights appeals with 2-3 page "summary orders" of octogenarian judges, coughed up a nearly 100-page opinion to justify what has previously been unjustifiable for any other litigants in federal court - overcoming the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
Well.
Now that the precedent has been created, in the agricultural terms, the horse has left the barn and what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Now civil rights plaintiffs, those whose cases are pending in federal courts, and those whose cases were tossed on Rooker-Feldman grounds, can make arguments to overcome the Rooker-Feldman bar based on the Chevron precedent of the 2nd Circuit, and raise corruptness of state courts as an exception to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
And again - I am not the author of that idea.
That authorship belongs entirely to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
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