United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
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No. 10-2405
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Harvey Edwards, *
*
Appellant, *
* Appeal from the United States
v. * District Court for the
* Eastern District of Arkansas.
City of Jonesboro, a Municipal *
Corporation; Harold Perrin, Mayor; *
Jim Hargis; Ann Williams; Chris *
Moore; Darrel Dover; Tim McCall; *
Mitch Johnson; John Street; Charles *
Frierson; Gene Vance; Mikel Fears; *
Rennell Woods; Chris Gibson, City *
Council, *
*
Appellees. *
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Submitted: January 12, 2011
Filed: July 14, 2011
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Before COLLOTON, GRUENDER, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
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COLLOTON, Circuit Judge.
Harvey Edwards sued the City of Jonesboro, its mayor, and the members of its
city council, alleging that methane gas from a city landfill invaded a tract of land
owned by Edwards and so reduced its value as to amount to a taking of the property
by the City. He sought just compensation under the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments, other compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief.
The district court1 dismissed Edwards’s claims, and we affirm.
I.
According to the complaint, Edwards acquired a thirty-acre tract of land in
Craighead County, Arkansas, in 1977, with the intention of developing or selling it.
Several parties expressed interest in buying the land. In 1999, however, an
environmental services firm performed an assessment of the site on behalf of a
prospective buyer, and discovered high levels of methane, a combustible gas. The
firm recommended no construction on the land until the methane problem was
remedied. Two more assessments, one in 2002 and one in 2005, found that the high
levels of methane persisted, and both recommended against building on the land. As
a result, at least two prospective buyers cancelled contracts to buy the land from
Edwards; one was a “firm contract” to buy the land for $550,000.
In 2005, Edwards sued the City of Jonesboro, its then-mayor, and the then-
members of its city council in Arkansas state court. The City had operated a landfill
adjacent to Edwards’s land since 1978, and Edwards alleged that the decomposition
of waste in the landfill created methane that migrated onto his land. Edwards asserted
state-law claims of inverse condemnation, trespass, nuisance, negligence and
negligence per se, strict liability, violations of two Arkansas statutes, and a violation
of the Arkansas Constitution. Edwards also alleged violations of his rights under the
First and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as applied to the states
through the Fourteenth Amendment. In a third amended complaint, however,
1
The Honorable Susan Webber Wright, United States District Judge for the
Eastern District of Arkansas, adopting the report and recommendation of the
Honorable J. Thomas Ray, United States Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of
Arkansas.
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Edwards included a “reservation of rights” that purported to reserve all federal rights
and remedies for a later suit in federal court.
Edwards’s suit was tried before an Arkansas circuit court judge, who found that
the invasion of methane from the City’s landfill resulted in a taking of Edwards’s
land. The court ordered the City to pay Edwards the value of the land at the time of
the taking, which the court determined to be $387,500, as well as $18,901.60 for
property taxes paid by Edwards from the time of the taking. The court declined to
award prejudgment interest, because the time of the taking was difficult to determine,
and because there was a serious dispute as to the value of the property. Edwards
attempted to appeal, but he failed to lodge the record with the clerk of the Arkansas
Supreme Court within the time allowed by rule, and the appeal was rejected as
untimely.
On September 28, 2009, Edwards filed this action in federal district court
against the City of Jonesboro, its mayor, and the members of its city council. He
asserted, under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claims of inverse condemnation, trespass, nuisance,
negligence and negligence per se, and strict liability, in violation of his rights under
the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. He also claimed that the City took his
property without paying just compensation, in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments. The district court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss Edwards’s
complaint, holding that Edwards’s claims were barred by issue preclusion and, in the
alternative, that the court lacked jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See
D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 476 (1983); Rooker v. Fid. Trust
Co., 263 U.S. 413, 416 (1923).
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II.
A.
Edwards first disputes the district court’s conclusion that the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine bars his claims. The decisions in Rooker and Feldman establish that with the
exception of habeas corpus proceedings, the inferior federal courts lack subject-
matter jurisdiction over appeals from state-court judgments. Jurisdiction over such
appeals is granted exclusively to the Supreme Court by 28 U.S.C. § 1257. Exxon
Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 292 (2005). We review de
novo a district court’s determination that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction under
Rooker-Feldman. Minch Family LLLP v. Buffalo-Red River Watershed Dist., 628
F.3d 960, 965 (8th Cir. 2010).
There is a question whether we must consider the Rooker-Feldman doctrine at
the threshold when resolution of that issue would affect the disposition of the appeal.
If Rooker-Feldman applies, then the district court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction.
With a few limited exceptions, federal courts must address Article III subject-matter
jurisdiction before reaching the merits of a claim or another non-jurisdictional
question such as issue preclusion. Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S.
83, 93-97 (1998). Whether this rule also applies to statutory jurisdiction, however,
is a matter of some dispute. Steel Co. noted that the limitations of statutory and
Article III jurisdiction have similar purposes, id. at 101, but the Court also
acknowledged that a federal court may reach a merits question before deciding a
question of statutory standing. Id. at 96-97 & n.2. The courts of appeals disagree
about whether a federal court may bypass Rooker-Feldman, a question of statutory
jurisdiction, to reach an easier question of preclusion or the merits. Compare Alyshah
v. United States, 241 F. App’x 665, 668 n.3 (11th Cir. 2007) (stating that Steel Co.
prevents federal courts from assuming that Rooker-Feldman does not apply in order
to reach the merits), Shell v. Meconi, 123 F. App’x 866, 867-68 (10th Cir. 2005)
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(same), Nguyen v. Phillips, 69 F. App’x 358, 359 n.3 (9th Cir. 2003) (same), In re
Knapper, 407 F.3d 573, 580 n.15 (3d Cir. 2005) (stating, without mentioning Steel
Co., that courts may not bypass Rooker-Feldman to reach the merits), Hutcherson v.
Lauderdale Cnty., 326 F.3d 747, 755 (6th Cir. 2003) (same), and Ctrs., Inc. v. Town
of Brookfield, 148 F.3d 699, 703 (7th Cir. 1998) (same), with Laychock v. Wells
Fargo Home Mortg., 399 F. App’x 716, 718-19 (3d Cir. 2010) (bypassing Rooker-
Feldman to decide the case based on preclusion), Torromeo v. Town of Fremont, 438
F.3d 113, 115 (1st Cir. 2006) (same), Quadrozzi Concrete Corp. v. City of N.Y., 149
F. App’x 17, 18 (2d Cir. 2005) (same), and Garcia v. Vill. of Mount Prospect, 360
F.3d 630, 634 n.5 (7th Cir. 2004) (same).
We need not decide whether it is permissible to bypass Rooker-Feldman,
because we are confident under circuit precedent that the district court had subject-
matter jurisdiction. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine is narrow; it applies only to “cases
brought by state-court losers 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 Mobil Corp., 544 U.S. at 284. The
Court explained that Rooker-Feldman does not “stop a district court from exercising
subject-matter jurisdiction simply because a party attempts to litigate in federal court
a matter previously litigated in state court,” because “[i]f a federal plaintiff present[s]
some independent claim, albeit one that denies a legal conclusion that a state court
has reached in a case to which he was a party . . . , then there is jurisdiction and state
law determines whether the defendant prevails under principles of preclusion.” Id.
at 293 (second and third alterations in original) (internal quotation omitted).
Edwards’s claims for inverse condemnation, trespass, nuisance, negligence and
negligence per se, and strict liability complain not of injuries caused by the state-court
judgment, but of injuries caused by the invasion of Edwards’s land by methane
emanating from the City’s landfill. Rooker-Feldman thus does not apply to those
claims. See MSK EyEs, Ltd. v. Wells Fargo Bank, 546 F.3d 533, 539 (8th Cir. 2008);
Riehm v. Engelking, 538 F.3d 952, 964-65 (8th Cir. 2008).
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The Rooker-Feldman issue is potentially more complicated with respect to
Edwards’s just compensation claim based on the Fifth Amendment. In Williamson
County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S.
172 (1985), the Supreme Court held that “a property owner has not suffered a
violation of the Just Compensation Clause until the owner has unsuccessfully
attempted to obtain just compensation through the procedures provided by the State
for obtaining such compensation.” Id. at 195. This is because the Fifth Amendment
proscribes only takings without just compensation, so “no constitutional violation
occurs until just compensation has been denied.” Id. at 194 n.13. Thus, in
Williamson County, a property owner’s constitutional claim was not ripe because the
owner had not sought compensation through a state-law inverse condemnation action.
Id. at 196-97.
Edwards’s alleged constitutional injury occurred when the state court failed to
award what Edwards claims is just compensation. It might be thought, therefore, that
Edwards complains of an injury caused by the state-court judgment, and that he now
seeks review and rejection of that judgment by a federal court. See San Remo Hotel,
L.P. v. City of S.F., 545 U.S. 323, 351 (2005) (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the
judgment) (stating that “insofar as Williamson County can be read to characterize the
state courts’ denial of compensation as a required element of the Fifth Amendment
takings claim,” Rooker-Feldman might bar property owners from bringing Just
Compensation Clause claims in federal court). This is not an insubstantial argument,
but our circuit precedent rejects it. In Knutson v. City of Fargo, 600 F.3d 992 (8th
Cir. 2010), this court held that in a § 1983 action based on the Just Compensation
Clause, the plaintiff’s alleged injury is caused by the loss of property, and not by a
state-court judgment that refused to award compensation. Id. at 995-96, aff’g on
alternative grounds and as modified No. 3:07-cv-68, 2008 WL 879735, at *4-6
(D.N.D. Mar. 28, 2008). Knutson compels the conclusion that Edwards does not
complain of an injury caused by a state-court judgment, and Rooker-Feldman does
not bar his Just Compensation Clause claim.
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B.
Edwards also contends that the district court erred by concluding that his
claims are precluded by the earlier state-court judgment. Under the Full Faith and
Credit Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1738, federal courts must “give the same preclusive effect to
state court judgments that those judgments would be given in the courts of the State
from which the judgments emerged.” Kremer v. Chem. Constr. Corp., 456 U.S. 461,
466 (1982); accord Migra v. Warren City Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 465 U.S. 75, 81
(1984). We review de novo the district court’s application of Arkansas preclusion
law. See Laase v. Cnty. of Isanti, 638 F.3d 853, 856 (8th Cir. 2011).
Arkansas preclusion law consists of “two facets, one being issue preclusion and
the other claim preclusion.” Carwell Elevator Co. v. Leathers, 101 S.W.3d 211, 216
(Ark. 2003). The parties and the district court focused on issue preclusion, but we
think the case is more readily resolved based on claim preclusion. See Bechtold v.
City of Rosemount, 104 F.3d 1062, 1068 (8th Cir. 1997). The Arkansas law of claim
preclusion bars a claim in a second suit when:
(1) the first suit resulted in a final judgment on the merits; (2) the first
suit was based upon proper jurisdiction; (3) the first suit was fully
contested in good faith; (4) both suits involve the same claim or cause
of action; and (5) both suits involve the same parties or their privies.
Ark. Office of Child Support Enforcement v. Williams, 995 S.W.2d 338, 339 (Ark.
1999). Claim preclusion bars not only claims that were litigated, but also claims that
could have been litigated and that are based on the same events as claims that were
litigated. Id.; Swofford v. Stafford, 748 S.W.2d 660, 662 (Ark. 1988).
Applying the foregoing criteria to this action, Edwards’s claims are barred.
First, the state court’s order disposing of Edwards’s state-court suit was a final
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adjudication of the merits of Edwards’s claim. Second, the state court had
jurisdiction over Edwards’s state-court action. See Ark. Code Ann. § 16-13-201(a).
Third, the state court’s order reveals that the parties fully contested the suit in good
faith. Fourth, Edwards could have brought his federal claims as part of his state-court
suit: “The requirement that aggrieved property owners must seek compensation
through the procedures the State has provided for doing so does not preclude state
courts from hearing simultaneously a plaintiff’s request for compensation under state
law and the claim that, in the alternative, the denial of compensation would violate
the Fifth Amendment . . . .” San Remo Hotel, 545 U.S. at 346 (internal citation and
quotation omitted). And Edwards’s federal claims were based on the same event as
his state-law claims before the state court, namely, the invasion of his land by
methane from the City’s landfill. Finally, the mayor and members of the city council
were sued in their official capacities, so the change in some officeholders between the
two lawsuits does not defeat preclusion.
Edwards did not avoid claim preclusion through the reservation of federal
rights that he included in the third amended complaint filed in the state-court action.
In San Remo Hotel, the Supreme Court held that there is no exception to the full faith
and credit statute under which property owners may reserve their federal rights for a
later federal suit. 545 U.S. at 337-38. Edwards argues that San Remo is
distinguishable, because the state court in that case actually addressed the
landowner’s federal claims, while the Arkansas court in his case did not. But we
rejected an identical argument in Knutson, 600 F.3d at 998, and it follows that
Edwards’s claims are precluded.
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The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
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