Leonard N. ANDERSON; Carol D. Berg; Carol D. Berg LLC, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CITY OF ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, a Minnesota Charter City; Steven Magner, both individually and in his official capacity as an employee of the City of St. Paul, Minnesota; Kathy Lantry; Melvin Carter; Dave Thune; Pat Harris; Russ Stark; Lee Helgen; Don Bostrom, both individually and in their capacities as members of the City Council of the City of St. Paul; Kamish Excavating, Inc., a Minnesota corporation, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 16-1661
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted: November 16, 2016. Filed: March 1, 2017
849 F.3d 773
Counsel who represented the appellee was Judith Ann Hanson, of Saint Paul, MN., Nathan John Knoernschild of Minneapolis, MN.
Before BENTON and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges, and STRAND, District Judge.1
SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge.
Leonard Anderson appeals the district court‘s2 order dismissing his federal and state law claims arising from a nuisance abatement carried out on his land. For the reasons discussed below, we affirm.
Mr. Anderson owns a 2.3-acre lot in St. Paul, Minnesota where he collects and stores, among other things, vehicles, trailers, commercial storage units, barrels, boats, and broken lawn mowers. Branding the collection a public nuisance, the City of
Just before Christmas 2011, the city issued a “notice to proceed with nuisance abatement” instructing city contractor Kamish Excavation to remove and dispose of various items of personal property stored on Mr. Anderson‘s lot. A month earlier, the city had ordered Mr. Anderson to cure the nuisance on his own and warned him that failure to do so could lead to an abatement by the city. Mr. Anderson did not cure the nuisance but appealed to the city council. When he failed to attend his legislative hearing, the council denied the appeal but granted an extension for Anderson to clean up the nuisance himself. The deadline arrived and the nuisance remained, so Kamish, in accordance with the city‘s instructions, entered Anderson‘s land and completed the abatement. Mr. Anderson promptly sued the city and two of its officials in the Ramsey County District Court, alleging violations of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, along with state constitutional claims, trespass, and conversion. In addition to Mr. Anderson, the plaintiffs were Anderson‘s long-term companion Carol Berg and her business, Berg LLC. Ms. Berg and Berg LLC were included partly because one of the items removed from Mr. Anderson‘s property, a commercial shipping container, belonged to Berg LLC. The trial court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment on all claims and entered final judgment against the plaintiffs. The Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed, and the Minnesota Supreme Court denied review.
Unsuccessful in state court, Anderson, Berg, and Berg LLC (collectively, Appellants) next filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, again challenging the 2011 abatement.3 They named the city, a city employee, seven city counselors, and the city contractor as defendants. The complaint alleged violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, as well as state constitutional claims, conversion, negligence, and violations of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. The district court held that claim preclusion prevents the Appellants from relitigating their federal claims arising from the 2011 abatement because those claims already were or could have been adjudicated in the 2012 state court action. In doing so the district court rejected Anderson‘s argument that his federal claims are for “continuing wrongs,” that is, failure to return the abated property, which Anderson claimed did not occur until after the state litigation ended. The court noted that Anderson‘s federal com-
II.
A district court‘s grant of a motion to dismiss is reviewed de novo, with all reasonable inferences construed in favor of the nonmovant. E-Shops Corp. v. U.S. Bank Nat‘l Ass‘n, 678 F.3d 659, 662 (8th Cir. 2012).
Minnesota law governs the preclusive effect of a prior Minnesota state court judgment. See
A. Same Set of Factual Circumstances
“The common test for determining whether a former judgment is a bar to a subsequent action is to inquire whether the same evidence will sustain both actions.” Id. at 840-41 (internal quotation marks omitted). It follows that, if facts giving rise to a claim in the second action did not occur until after the first action terminates, claim preclusion would not bar the subsequent claim. See Mach v. Wells Concrete Prods. Co., 866 N.W.2d 921, 925 (Minn. 2015) (“Claims are not considered the same cause of action if the right to assert the second claim did not arise at the same time as the right to assert the first claim.“) (internal quotation marks omitted). Appellants argue that their federal complaint “was entirely based on a new set of facts occurring after the dismissal of the [state court suit].” Though not a model of clarity on this point, Appellants’ brief indicates that, while litigating in state court, Appellants did not and could not have known that city employees retained Mr. Anderson‘s abated property for personal use. These recently discovered facts, according to Appellants, gave rise to two new claims—never before litigated in any court—that the abated property “was fraudulently concealed and part of a continuing violation.”
The supposedly new facts and causes of action that Appellants argue enable their
In sum, the relevant factual circumstances of the former and current actions are those surrounding the December 22, 2011 nuisance abatement carried out on Mr. Anderson‘s property. The record does not point to a single factual development that occurred after the state court litigation ended. We therefore conclude that both actions involve the same set of facts.
B. Same Parties or Privies
Four of the thirteen parties to the current action were also parties to the state suit: Anderson, Berg, and Berg LLC as plaintiffs, and the City of St. Paul as a defendant. As to the seven city counselors and city contractor Kamish Excavating, who were not parties in state court, Appellants’ counsel has expressly conceded that those defendants are in privity with the city. Mot. Hr‘g Tr. 11-12, Sept. 16, 2015, ECF No. 94. The only remaining party is Steven Magner, the city manager of code enforcement who, according to Appellants’ complaint, supervised the abatement on Mr. Anderson‘s property in 2011. Thus, we must determine whether Mr. Magner is in privity with a party to the prior state court action.
Privity exists where a non-party‘s “interests are represented by a party to the action,” or where a party is “otherwise so identified in interest with another that he represents the same legal right” with respect to a previously asserted claim. Rucker v. Schmidt, 794 N.W.2d 114, 118 (Minn. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). It is not enough that two individuals both wish to prevail in litigation; their legal interests must be aligned to the point of being “similarly affected by the outcome of a legal proceeding.” Id. at 120. The Minnesota Supreme Court has emphasized that privity has no per se definition and that privity determinations “require[] a careful examination of the circumstances of each case.” Id. at 118.
The district court concluded that Minnesota law generally recognizes privity between the government and its employees. In support, the court cited Vizenor v. Hoffman, an unpublished decision from the Minnesota Court of Appeals. No. A070646, 2008 WL 933480, at *3 (Minn. Ct. App. Apr. 8, 2008). Though we do not adopt the district court‘s generalization regarding employer-employee privity,4 we find the facts and analysis of Vizenor instructive to our determination that Mr. Magner and the City of St. Paul are in privity. Vizenor
Like the deputies in Vizenor, Mr. Magner is a government actor charged with enforcing provisions of the city code. It was his job to order the city contractor to carry out the nuisance abatement on Mr. Anderson‘s land, and his interests were therefore affected by the prior suit challenging that abatement. As a result, Mr. Magner is in privity with the City of St. Paul. See Rucker, 794 N.W.2d at 120.
C. Final Judgment on the Merits
The Ramsey County District Court granted summary judgment against Anderson, Berg, and Berg LLC and entered judgment accordingly. “It is well established that summary judgment is a final judgment on the merits for purposes of res judicata.” Dicken v. Ashcroft, 972 F.2d 231, 233 n.5 (8th Cir. 1992). Accordingly, there was a final judgment on the merits in the prior litigation.
D. Full and Fair Opportunity to Litigate the Matter
“The question of whether a party had a full and fair opportunity to litigate a matter generally focuses on whether there were significant procedural limitations in the prior proceeding, whether the party had the incentive to litigate fully the issue, or whether effective litigation was limited by the nature or relationship of the parties.” State v. Joseph, 636 N.W.2d 322, 328 (Minn. 2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). According to Appellants’ brief, “Leonard Anderson has never had an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of St. Paul‘s nuisance abatement ordinance.” This assertion is belied by the state court record. Appellants’ complaint to the Ramsey County District Court specifically requested a declaratory judgment that the defendants’ “actions, customs, and policies ... have violated the United States and Minnesota Constitutions.” Both the trial court and the state court of appeals analyzed the state and federal constitutionality of the defendants’ conduct and determined that the plaintiffs were not entitled to relief. While Appellants may object to the outcome of the state court proceedings, “a litigant‘s disagreement with a legal ruling does not necessarily mean that the court denied the litigant a full and fair opportunity to litigate a matter.” Joseph, 636 N.W.2d at 329.
The record reveals no barriers to Appellants’ ability or incentive to challenge the 2011 nuisance abatement in Minnesota‘s state courts. We therefore conclude that Appellants had a full and fair opportunity to litigate this matter in the prior action.
III.
We hold that Appellants’ claims arising from the 2011 nuisance abatement on Mr. Anderson‘s land are precluded under the doctrine of claim preclusion. Accordingly, the district court‘s order dismissing those claims is affirmed.