Despite clear language from the Supreme Court establishing that “a state court determination may not be substituted, against a party’s wishes, for his right to litigate his federal claims fully in the federal courts,”
England v. La. State Bd. of Med. Exam’rs,
I
The complicated procedural history of this case reveals the sisyphean task that the Supreme Court’s decision in
Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City,
Los Altos submitted evidence to the City indicating that the rent control ordinance was permitting mobile home owners to sell their homes at a significant premium, essentially transferring wealth from mobile home park owners to mobile home tenants. 1 Los Altos’s evidencе suggested that the market price for a comparable mobile home pad not subject to rent control would be around $1200 per month, six times what Los Altos’s tenants were paying. The City apparently disagreed with the import of this evidence. After deliberating, the City granted Los Altos a discretionary rent increase of $5.84 per month.
Los Altos filed two suits in federal court that were eventually consolidated.
See Hillsboro Props. v. City of Capitola,
No. C 01-20543 JF (N.D.Cal.2001);
Los Altos El Granada Investors v. City of Capitola,
No. C 01-20667 JF (N.D.Cal.2001). Los Altos alleged both as-applied and facial challenges to the City’s rent control ordinance — its complaint asked for relief for violations of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and also requested a writ of administrative mandamus. The City moved to dismiss, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision in
Williamson
required Los Altos to seek (and be denied) relief in state cоurt first before bringing its claims in federal court.
See
In an attempt to ripen its federal claims under
Williamson,
Los Altos filed a suit in
In its complaint, Los Altos asserted an England reservation: it “reserved] for independent adjudication in the federal courts ... all federal questions, including but not limited to any federal Fifth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment claims for a taking of property, due process or equal protection, for adjudication before the United States District Court.” Los Altos expressly cited England.
On September 15, 2003, the Santa Cruz Superior Court sustained the City’s demurrer to Los Altos’s causes of action for declaratory relief and inverse condemnation, holding that to the extent that these causes of action asserted facial challenges to the ordinance they were barred by the statute of limitations and the “res judieata/collateral estoppel effect” of the first district court decision. The court also held that to the extent these causes of action asserted as-applied challenges, they were not ripe until Los Altos had completed the process of requesting a writ of administrative mandamus. 2 The Superior Court also granted the City’s motion to strike Los Altos’s England reservation from its complaint, holding that the reservation was “irrelevant and not proper in the context of this case.” The Superior Court failed to explain why the reservation was “irrelevant.”
Meanwhile, on August 20, 2003, Los Altos had filed a new аction in the district court, re-alleging its federal claims. See Los Altos El Granada Investors v. City of Capitola, No. C03-3859 JF (N.D.Cal.2003). Los Altos argued that it had adequately ripened its state law causes of action under Williamson because the Superior Court had denied its rights to compensation by sustaining the City’s demurrer. The district court disagreed and dismissed the action on November 13, 2003, holding that Los Altos had not yet exhausted its state causes of action and declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the writ petition.
Back in Santa Cruz Superior Court, the petition for a writ of administrative mandamus was argued and decided. On May 25, 2004, the court held a motions hearing in which it announced its intention to deny the writ petition. Although Los Altos argued that if the court was denying the writ petition its state law takings causes of action were no longer moot, and therefore asked for leave to reassert the state law inverse condemnation cause of action, the court rejected this request and stated that “[it] would be a cleaner procedure ... to
On December 3, 2004, after judgment was entered by the Superior Court, Los Altos also filed another action in the district court (the present case).
See Los Altos El Granada Investors v. City of Capitola,
No. C04-5138 JF (N.D.Cal.2004). The complaint alleged five claims: (1) a Fifth Amendment regulatory taking claim under
Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York,
The City filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim and for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The district court granted that motion in part on July 26, 2005, holding that Los Altos’s “failure to substantially advance” claim was no longer viable after the Supreme Court’s decision in
Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc.,
A year later, on May 17, 2006, the California Court of Appeal reversed the prior judgment of the Santa Cruz Superior Court in part, and remanded to the Superi- or Court to allow Los Altos to state its ripened as-applied state law takings causes of action.
Los Altos El Granada Investors v. City of Capitola,
On September 18, 2006, Los Altos took the remand provided by the California Court of Appeal and filed an amended complaint in the Superior Court. The complaint asserted causes of action for inverse condemnation, a violation of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution, and a violation of the due process clause of the California Constitution. It also renewed Los Altos’s attempt to reserve its federal claims under England.
The City demurred, and the Superior Court sustained that demurrer on December 19, 2006. The Superior Court concluded:
[Pjlaintiff s first cause of action is barred by Kavanau v. Santa Monica Rent Control Board,16 Cal.4th 761 ,66 Cal. Rptr.2d 672 ,941 P.2d 851 (1997), because it has been established that plaintiff is receiving a fair return on its property. The Court finds that plaintiffssecond cause of action for violation of equal protection is a time-barred facial challenge to the ordinance. The Court finds that plaintiffs third cause of action for violation of procedural due process was originally brought as part of plaintiffs administrative writ petition, but subsequently abandoned both at the writ hearing and on appeal.
The Superior Court also struck Los Altos’s renewed England reservation, holding that the earlier decision of the California Court of Appeal barred the reassertion of that reservation.
After the Superior Court’s decision, Los Altos moved on November 17, 2006 to lift the stay in the district court action. The district court lifted the stay on February 26, 2007, after Los Altos declared that it would not appeal the Superior Court’s decision. The City moved for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the final judgment in the Superior Court barred Los Altos’s claims in the district court under the doctrines of claim preclusion and issue preclusion. The district court granted the City’s motion. It held that because “California takings jurisprudence is cоngruent with federal law ... the Superior Court’s adjudication of California takings claims is equivalent to the adjudication of their federal counterparts, and the doctrine of issue preclusion also bars the relitigation of those claims as federal claims.” Because all of Los Altos’s other constitutional claims could have been litigated before the Superior Court, the district court held that they were barred by claim preclusion. Although the district court noted that a successful England reservation might prevent claim preclusion, it held that because Los Altos had failed to appeal the Superior Court’s second striking of the England reservation, it would give that decision “preclusive” effect as well.
II
Before addressing the merits, we must decide whether the district court abused its discretion in granting Los Altos’s motion for an extension of time to file an appeal.
See Pincay v. Andrews,
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(1)(A) requires a party in a civil case to file a notice of appeal with the district court clerk “within 30 days аfter the judgment or order appealed from is entered.” Nevertheless, the rule also allows a party to move for an extension of time to file a notice of appeal if two things are true: first, the party files its motion “no later than 30 days after the time prescribed by this Rule 4(a) expires;” and second, “regardless of whether its motion is filed before or during the 30 days after the time prescribed by this Rule 4(a) expires, that party shows excusable neglect or good cause.” Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(5)(A). Because Los Altos filed for an extension of time within the thirty-day window for filing such a motion, the only question is whether the district court erred in determining that Los Altos showed excusable neglect or good cause.
In
Pioneer Investment Services Co. v. Brunswick Associates Ltd. Partnership,
Los Altos’s filings in the district court were quite vague about why it missed the filing deadline. The declaration of counsel in charge of calendaring the appeal initially asserted that his law firm had “an established system for calendaring court deadlines, which provides for incoming pleadings and outgoing pleadings to be automatically routed.” In somewhat contradictory fashion, however, counsel later admitted that the calendaring system was not entirely automated — he remarked that the error occurred when “the Court’s decision on the merits was forwarded by me to my assistant, but I apparently did not forward the Judgment.” Later, in its reply brief in support of its motion before the district court, Los Altos claimed thаt the error “[was] not one of simple inaction” but a system failure that occurred “because of a change in personnel.” The reply brief claimed that the calendaring clerk at the firm never received the judgment “because of a turnover in that position.” No declarations supporting this “change in personnel” were attached to the reply brief.
In
Pioneer,
the Court gave little weight to “upheaval in [a] law practice” as a compelling reason for a filing delay.
We cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in determining that counsel’s neglect was in good faith and excusable. Although the City argues that Los Altos may have had surreptitious motives for failing to file a timely notice of appeal, all the evidence before the district court suggests the opposite conclusion— whatever the preсise contours of counsel’s failure to calendar the appeal, there is nothing to intimate that the failure was not one of mere oversight. Also, although counsel’s failure to calendar the appeal was based in part on a mistake within his control, we will defer to the district court’s determination that such conduct was excusable. Thus, we affirm the district court’s decision to permit Los Altos additional time for filing an appeal.
Ill
We begin our discussion of the merits of the appeal by noting a fact that has appar
After being dismissed (with prejudice) from federal court for failing to satisfy Williamson, Los Altos made its first England reservation when it filed its first complaint in the Santa Cruz Superior Court. This reservation was stricken by the Superior Court as “irrelevant.” While this and other aspects of that decision were being appealed, Los Altos attempted to return to federal court, arguing that its claims were now ripe under Williamson. The district court, however, stayed the action under Younger pending the state court appeal. The California Court of Appeal then affirmed the striking of the original England reservation on the grounds that Los Altos’s case had been stayed under Younger — reasoning that was entirely circular because the district court had abstained under Younger only because of the pendency of the state appeal. In other words, the California Court of Appeal cоnsidered the England reservation inappropriate following Younger abstention, but the district court had abstained under Younger only because the California appeal was still pending — the Younger abstention followed the England reservation. On remand to the Superior Court from the Court of Appeal, Los Altos renewed its England reservation. The Superior Court then held that the California Court of Appeal’s decision was res judicata to a reassertion of the reservation and struck Los Altos’s second reservation.
In sum, Los Altos made two distinct England reservations, each under different circumstances: Los Altos’s original reservation was made when no federal case was pending; and its renewed reservation occurred after the district court had abstained under Younger. Although it is unclear which England reservation the district court thought was barred by the preclusive effect of the state court decisions, for the reasons we explain below, both reservations were valid when made and were not undermined by the subsequent decisiоns of the California courts.
A
Los Altos’s original England reservation was valid because it was made after Los Altos was forced to litigate in state court by the exhaustion requirements of Williamson. Moreover, even if we give preclusive effect to the Superior Court’s decision to strike the reservation from Los Altos’s complaint, the validity of the reservation itself remains intact.
1
In
England,
the Supreme Court addressed the objection “that a litigant who has properly invoked the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court to consider federal constitutional claims can be compelled, without his consent and through no fault of his own, to accept instead a state court’s determination of those claims.”
The “uncertainties” of this latter scenario led the Court to recognize a procedure — commonly referred to as an
“England
reservation” — by which a litigant “may readily forestall any conclusion that he has elected not to return to the District Court”: the litigant may state on the record that “should the state courts hold against him on the question of state law, [he will] return to the District Court for disposition of his federal contentions.”
Id.
at 421,
The
England
rule is a salutary one. It preserves “the role of state courts as the final expositors of state law” as recognized by the abstention doctrine, as well as the interests of putative federal litigants who have the “right ... to choose a Federal court where there is a choice.”
Id.
at 415,
Although some courts have attempted to limit the
England
reservation to the facts of that case, we have never read the case so narrowly. In
England,
the Court addressed a situation in which (1) the plaintiffs filed first in federal court; (2) the court abstained under the
Pullman
doctrine; and (3) the plaintiffs subsequently brought suit in state court.
See id.
at 412-13,
In
Tovar v. Billmeyer,
Where a federal court abstains (or could abstain) and sends the plaintiffs to state court, or where plaintiffs realize that abstention is likely and file a parallel actiоn in state court, they may be able to preserve a federal forum for their federal claims by expressly reserving the issues in state court.
2
Having determined that Los Altos’s original reservation of claims under England was permissible in this case, we must confront the primary question on appeal: whether the district court was correct to give preclusive effect to the Superi- or Court’s striking of the reservation as “irrelevant.”
The Constitution instructs the states to give “Full Faith and Credit ... to the public Acts, Records, and Judicial Proceedings of every other State.” U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1. The Constitution also gives Congress the power to determine the contours of this deference. Id. (“And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”). In the course of prescribing such manner, Congress, through the Full Faith and Credit Act, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1738, extended the recognition of state judgments to the federal courts. Section 1738 provides that state court “judicial proceedings ... shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States ... as they have by law or usage in the courts of such State, Territory or Possession from which they are taken.”
The Supreme Court has interpreted the Act to require federal courts “to 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. Chemical Constr. Corp.,
Applying the test created by § 1738, and absent an exception, we are required to give full faith and credit to the California Superior Court’s decision to strike Los Altos’s
England
reservation. California Code of Civil Procedure section 436 enables a court to, “upon a motion ... or at any time in its discretion, ... [s]trike out any irrelevant, false, or improper matter inserted in any pleading.” Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 436(a);
see also Blickman Turkus, LP v. MF Downtown Sunnyvale, LLC,
Although we think that the Santa Cruz Superior Court’s attempt to deprive Los Altos of its choice of fora was a failure to follow
England,
we need
not
decide today whether to recognize an exception to the Full Faith and Credit Clause for such jurisdictional circumventions. Even granting full faith and credit to the Superior Court’s decision to delete Los Altos’s
England
reservation from its complaint, the Superior Court’s action cannot have had any “preclusive” effect on the claims Los Altos can assert before a federal court, because an explicit, on the record reservation is not required to preserve federal claims. In
England,
the Court noted that a party
“may
accomplish [a reservation of federal claims] by making on the state record the 'reservation to the disposition of the entire case by the state courts.’ ”
Although it appears clear that Los Altos did not press its federal claims in state court, we need not scrutinize the state court record to determine whether Los Altos may have deliberately, incidentally, or accidentally “litigated its federal claims in the state courts.” Even if Los Altos briefed its federal takings claims, the Superior Court’s action in striking the explicit England reservation by itself preserves to us the jurisdiction to hear Los Altos’s federal claims. Specifically, the Santa Cruz Superior Court’s decision to strike the England reservation at the earliest opportunity demonstrates that “[Los Altos was] compelled by the state courts to litigate [its federal] claims there,” id., and we can conclude that Los Altos has not voluntarily litigated its federal claims in either the Santa Cruz Superior Court or the California Court of Appeal. The state courts were aware from the outset that Los Altos intended to return to federal court. Whether Los Altos accomplished this by asserting its England reservation in its complaint or by advising the court orally or by some other method, it gave the California courts full notice of its reservation, and that is all England requires.
B
Although Los Altos’s renewed reservation was made after the district court had abstained under Younger, this second assertion of its England rights was also valid because the district court did not dismiss the action but deferred it pending resolution of the decision of the California Court of Appeal. As with the first reservation, the Superior Court’s decision to strike the renewed reservation had no effect on its validity.
1
The City argues that the renewed England reservation was not permissible because by that time the district court had abstained under Younger rather than Pullman, and that an England reservation may not follow Younger abstention. Younger, however, is not a per se bar to the articulation of the England reservation.
In
United Parcel Service
and other cases, we stated the general proposition that “the
England
reservation is not available when a federal court abstains pursuant to
Younger,
thereby declining rather than postponing jurisdiction as it would under Pullman.”
Our en banc opinion in
Gilbertson v. Albright,
allow[ ] the federal plaintiff an opportunity to pursue constitutional challenges in the state proceeding (assuming, or course, that such an opportunity is available under state law), and the state an opportunity to pass on those constitutional issues in the context of its own procedures, while still preserving the federal plaintiffs opportunity to pursue compensation in the forum of his choice.
Id. In other words, because in damages cases there may yet be something for the federal courts to decide after completion of the state proceedings, the federal court cannot simply dismiss the action and require the plaintiff to assert all of his claims in the state court.
These principles govern this case. Here, Los Altos seeks damages, not injunctive relief. The district court— quite appropriately — did not
dismiss
under
Younger
but
stayed
the proceedings
2
For reasons similar to those discussed in Part III.A.2, the district court also erred in giving preclusive effect to the Superior Court’s decision to strike the reassertion of Los Altos’s England reservation. Although the Superior Court determined that the intervening California Court of Appeal’s decision barred the reassertion of the reservation in the Superior Court, this decision has no effect on the validity of the reservation. Like the first Superior Court decision striking the original reservation as “irrelevant,” striking the second England reservation may have removed it from the complaint, but it could not affect the fact that the state courts were on notice that Los Altos was thеre to adjudicate its state causes of action only and intended to return to federal court to adjudicate its federal claims.
IV
We hold that the district court erred in determining that the state courts’ decisions to strike Los Altos’s England reservations meant there was no valid reservation. We reverse and remand to the district court to determine the effect of a valid England reservation on the City’s attempt to assert claim and issue preclusion against Los Altos’s federal claims.
REVERSED in part and REMANDED. The panel will retain jurisdiction over any future appeals.
Notes
. As the Supreme Court noted in
Yee v. City of Escondido,
. California has created its own version of
Williamson. See Kavanau v. Santa Monica Rent Control Bd.,
. Specifically, in
United Parcel Setvice
we held that an
England
reservation would forestall claim preclusion where the litigant was "forced to litigate in state court,”
. The district court's decision to abstain under Younger rather than Pullman has not been appealed and is thus not before us.