Nicole M. Loch v. Fred Watkins; John D. O’hair; Count Yof Wayne; Benny Napoleon; the City of Detroit

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RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
Pursuant to Sixth Circuit Rule 206
ELECTRONIC CITATION: 2003 FED App. 0234P (6th Cir.)
File Name: 03a0234p.06
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
_________________
NICOLE M. LOCH,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
FRED WATKINS; JOHN D.
O’HAIR; COUNT Y OF WAYNE;
BENNY NAPOLEON; THE CITY
OF DETROIT,
Defendants-Appellees.
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No. 01-1598
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Michigan at Detroit.
No. 00-70478—Denise Page Hood, District Judge.
Argued: March 27, 2003
Decided and Filed: July 17, 2003
Before: MARTIN, Chief Circuit Judge; KENNEDY and
DAUGHTREY, Circuit Judges.
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_________________
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Hugh M. Davis, Jr., CONSTITUTIONAL
LITIGATION ASSOCIATES, Detroit, Michigan, for
Appellant. Linda D. Fegins, CITY OF DETROIT LAW
DEPARTMENT, Detroit, Michigan, Julie C. Quinlan-
Dufrane, WAYNE COUNTY CORPORATION COUNSEL,
Detroit, Michigan, for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Cynthia
Heenan, CONSTITUTIONAL LITIGATION ASSOCIATES,
Detroit, Michigan, for Appellant. Linda D. Fegins, CITY OF
DETROIT LAW DEPARTMENT, Detroit, Michigan, W.
Steven Pearson, WAYNE COUNTY CORPORATION
COUNSEL, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellees.
_________________
OPINION
_________________
BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Chief Circuit Judge. Nicole
Loch appeals the decision of the district court dismissing her
claims under state law and under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 on the
ground of abstention. The case stemmed from seizure of
Loch’s Jeep Cherokee under the Michigan forfeiture statute.
Loch challenged the seizure under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state
conversion grounds, seeking damages. She later filed
motions for declaratory and injunctive relief, as well as leave
to amend her complaint to include would-be plaintiffs who
could represent a proposed class of litigants opposing the
forfeiture procedure. Upon motion by the defendant
municipalities and officers, the district court found that it
could not review her complaints because they were
intertwined with pending state litigation. For the following
reasons, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
On January 7, 2000, Detroit police officers seized a 1996
Jeep Cherokee driven by Jack Paul Barrett II after Barrett was

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No. 01-1598 Loch v. Watkins, et al. 3
arrested for attempting to purchase marijuana. The Jeep was
impounded, then seized, under section 333.7521(1)(d) of the
Michigan Compiled Laws, which authorizes forfeiture of any
vehicle involved in the use, transport, or facilitation of
transport of controlled substances for sale or receipt. The
officers seized the vehicle as part of a Wayne County program
called Operation Push-Off. The program permits the police
to seize vehicles that are used in the purchase or attempted
purchase of any amount of marijuana. The local prosecutors
then subject those vehicles to forfeiture.
Loch, who owned the Jeep, was not present at the time of
the arrest but received notice of the pending forfeiture. The
notice advises the owner of the right to post a bond and
contest the forfeiture in state court. The owner has the option,
however, of settling the case for a specified sum plus towing
and storage costs, thereby regaining possession of the vehicle.
Loch attempted to post bond and contest the seizure of her
property. She claims, however, that the prosecutor’s office
told her that she was not permitted to post bond and contest
the forfeiture because there was a lien on the vehicle and that
the vehicle would be turned over to the lienholder of record
unless Loch entered into an agreement on the forfeiture.
Loch claims that the prosecutor’s office leads owners to
believe that to obtain a trial date, the owners must waive their
rights to certain pretrial proceedings. The defendants contest
that claim, stating that pretrial waiver is optional and not
required to obtain a trial date. The prosecutor’s office also
seeks to have state courts hold owners who prevail on the
forfeiture liable for towing and storage expense. Eventually,
the Wayne County prosecutor’s office waived the bond
requirement and filed a forfeiture action in Wayne County
Circuit Court.
At the trial on the merits on June 22, 2000, the court
determined that Loch was an “innocent owner” of the Jeep
because she was unaware of Barrett’s intent to use the car for
procuring marijuana. The court concluded that Loch was
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innocent of wrongdoing, ordered return of the vehicle, and on
a motion for reconsideration of a decision to impose a $600
towing and storage fee, ruled that Loch was not responsible
for those costs. The state appealed that judgment, and the
Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on the case on August 23,
2002. People v. 1996 Jeep and Nichole Loch, Claimant
Appellee, 652 N.W.2d 675 (Mich. App. 2002).
Twenty days after the seizure of the vehicle in Barrett’s
arrest, but before the forfeiture hearing in state court, Loch
filed a complaint in federal district court. Loch first made a
claim under section 1983, claiming that Michigan’s
Operation Push-Off violated the due process clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
because it deprived individuals of forfeiture hearings and
extorted settlements from owners who wished to avoid losing
the vehicles to lienholders. Loch made a second claim under
section 1983, alleging that the City of Detroit and Wayne
County failed to train their employees adequately in the
operation of the forfeiture, thus depriving Loch of due process
and resulting in an unlawful seizure of property. Loch’s third
section 1983 claim alleged that the forfeiture amounted to
taking of property without just compensation. Loch’s fourth
section 1983 claim alleged that police Sergeant Watkins’s use
of the forfeiture statute constituted an abuse of process.
Loch’s final claim arose out of state law, and she alleged that
all of the defendants conspired to convert the Jeep to their
possession.
Eventually, Loch filed motions with the district court
seeking declaratory and injunctive relief and leave to amend
her complaint to add plaintiffs who could represent a class of
litigants challenging the forfeiture procedure. The
municipalities and their employees responded by filing
motions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction under Federal Rule
of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1). The defendants claimed that the
district court should abstain from deciding the claims before
it because the federal proceedings involved claims

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No. 01-1598 Loch v. Watkins, et al. 5
inextricably intertwined with the pending state forfeiture
action.
The district court granted the motions to dismiss, finding
that the federal court should not invoke jurisdiction over
Loch’s complaint during pendency of the state proceedings,
based upon principles of abstention articulated in Rooker v.
Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923); District of Columbia
Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983); and
Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971). The district court also
denied Loch’s motions for declaratory and injunctive relief
and leave to amend.
We review a dismissal for lack of subject matter
jurisdiction de novo. Blakely v. United States, 276 F.3d 853,
863 (6th Cir. 2002). As to the review of the district court’s
decision to abstain, we said in United States v.
Commonwealth of Kentucky, 252 F.3d 816, 825 (6th Cir.
2001):
While we normally review de novo a district court's
decision to abstain, see Fed. Express Corp. v. Tennessee
Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 925 F.2d 962, 967 (6th Cir.1991),
we have at least on one occasion reviewed such a
decision for abuse of discretion, see Romine v.
Compuserve Corp., 160 F.3d 337, 341, 343 (6th
Cir.1998). As the Second Circuit has noted, however,
"there is little practical distinction between review for
abuse of discretion and review de novo" in abstention
cases, inasmuch as the district court's discretion to
abstain "is narrowed by a federal court's obligation to
exercise its jurisdiction in all but the most extraordinary
cases." Hachamovitch v. DeBuono, 159 F.3d 687, 693
(2d Cir.1998).
As that case indicates, generally federal courts should not
abstain from exercising jurisdiction on abstention grounds, for
abstention “is an extraordinary and narrow exception to the
duty of a District Court to adjudicate a controversy properly
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before it.” County of Allegheny v. Frank Mashuda Co., 360
U.S. 185, 188-89 (1959). When a court does elect to abstain,
the decision must be under “the exceptional circumstances
where the order to the parties to repair to the state court would
clearly serve an important countervailing interest.” Id.
The Supreme Court has announced several circumstances
which qualify as exceptional and in which abstention is
appropriate. One of these “doctrines” is applicable to this
case. In Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), the Supreme
Court advised federal courts to abstain from deciding a matter
that would be properly before them but for the pendency of
state criminal proceedings in the matter. Id. at 43-45. We
look at three factors to determine if Younger abstention is
warranted: “(1) whether the underlying proceedings constitute
an ongoing state judicial proceeding, (2) whether the
proceedings implicate important state interests, and
(3) whether there is an adequate opportunity in the state
proceedings to raise a constitutional challenge.” Tindall v.
Wayne County Friend of the Court, 269 F.3d 533, 538 (6th
Cir. 2001); see also Cooper v. Parrish, 203 F.3d 937, 954
(6th Cir. 2000); Zalman v. Armstrong, 802 F.2d 199, 201-02
(6th Cir. 1986).
First, when determining whether state court proceedings
involving the plaintiffs are pending, we look to see if the
state court proceeding was pending at the time the federal
complaint was filed. Zalman, 802 F.2d at 204. It remains
pending until a litigant has exhausted his state appellate
remedies. Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592, 609 (1975);
Foster v. Kassulke, 898 F.2d 1144, 1146 (6th Cir. 1990).
Loch argues that the state court proceeding was not pending
when she filed her federal lawsuit because she filed her
federal complaint four days before the state filed its complaint
seeking forfeiture. She asserts that the state judicial
proceedings had not been initiated, so no ongoing proceeding
would have given her opportunity to raise any constitutional
challenges in state court.

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No. 01-1598 Loch v. Watkins, et al. 7
In Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 349 (1975), however,
the Court held “that where state criminal proceedings are
begun against the federal plaintiffs after the federal complaint
is filed but before any proceedings of substance on the merits
have taken place in the federal court, the principles of
Younger v. Harris should apply in full force.” Although Loch
argues that the state proceedings had run their course before
the district court made its decision in March of 2001, she
cannot be correct. The state of Michigan appealed the
judgment of the state court in the forfeiture case, and the state
appellate process was not complete when the district court
decided to abstain in the case, as is clear from the August
2002 judgment of the Michigan Court of Appeals in People
v. 1996 Jeep and Nichole Loch, Claimant Appellee, 652
N.W.2d 675 (Mich. App. 2002).
As the Supreme Court said in Huffman, 420 U.S. at 608,
“[A]ll of the evils at which Younger is directed would inhere
in federal intervention prior to completion of state appellate
proceedings, just as surely as they would if such intervention
occurred at or before trial.” For that reason, we hold that the
district court was correct in assessing the proceedings before
it as ongoing in the state courts.
Next we turn to the questions of “whether the proceedings
implicate important state interests, and whether there is an
adequate opportunity in the state proceedings to raise a
constitutional challenge.” Tindall, 269 F.3d at 538. Though
Younger itself concerned abstention when a state criminal
matter was pending, the doctrine has been interpreted to
caution against interference in state civil matters. As the
Supreme Court said in Juidice v. Vail, 430 U.S. 327, 334
(1977) (internal citations omitted):
[T]he more vital consideration behind the Younger
doctrine of nonintervention lay not in the fact that the
state criminal process was involved but rather in the
notion of comity, that is, a proper respect for state
functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country
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is made up of a Union of separate state governments, and
a continuance of the belief that the National Government
will fare best if the States and their institutions are left
free to perform their separate functions in their separate
ways.
See also Middlesex County Ethics Comm’n. v. Garden State
Bar Ass’n, 457 U.S. 423 (1982); Kelm v. Hyatt, 44 F.3d 415,
419 (6th Cir. 1995).
We find persuasive the Eighth Circuit’s perspective in
Postscript Enterprises, Inc. v. Peach, 878 F.2d 1114, 1116
(8th Cir. 1989), in which the court held that forfeiture
proceedings are quasi-criminal in nature and of such a
character as to warrant application of the Younger doctrine.
“The state’s interest in these forfeiture proceedings is likely
to be as great as its interest in its criminal law proceedings.”
Id. Citing Huffman, 420 U.S. at 605 (internal citations
omitted), the court in Postscript Enterprises said, “Under the
Younger abstention doctrine the federal courts must abstain
from interfering with the efforts of states or local
governments ‘to protect the very interests which underlie
[their] criminal laws and to obtain compliance with precisely
the standards which are embodied in [their] criminal laws.’”
We find this reasoning persuasive. We believe that
Michigan’s interest in its forfeiture laws is directly correlated
with its interest in the enforcement of the criminal laws. We
further believe that there was no impediment to Loch’s raising
the constitutional issues of this case in the state proceedings.
For these reasons, we believe Younger abstention is
appropriate in this case.
It is crucial that we make clear that the district court’s
decision to abstain from hearing this case was appropriate at
the time of the decision given the pendency of the state
proceedings. Loch’s claims are therefore dismissed without
prejudice, because we decline to address their merits, and she
is free to raise any and all of these claims in federal court
when the state proceedings are fully completed.

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No. 01-1598 Loch v. Watkins, et al. 9
Based on the foregoing, we AFFIRM the judgment of the
district court.

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