Case Citator › Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie

Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
452 U.S. 394
Decided
Confirmed treatments
4
Flagged citations read
223 of 223
Citing cases (total)
2,470
Treatment dates
1987–2011
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie remains limited by the 4 confirmed treatments listed below. All 223 flagged citations have been read.
More on how this was screened

Rivet v. Regions Bank of Louisiana confined Moitie's removal-jurisdiction footnote. New Mexico separately declined to adopt Moitie's approach for its own preclusion law, as described below.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

2,470 later cases cite Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie; 223 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Ninth Circuit confined Moitie's artful-pleading doctrine to plaintiffs seeking to evade the preclusive effect of a prior federal judgment.

    Price v. PSA, Inc. · Ninth Circuit · filed

    In Federated Dep't Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U.S. 394, 101 S.Ct. 2424, 69 L.Ed.2d 103 (1981), the Supreme Court invoked the artful pleading doctrine when a plaintiff tried to avoid the preclusive effect of a prior adverse judgment. ... We have recently held that use of the doctrine is limited to cases such as Moitie where a plaintiff is seeking to circumvent the res judicata impact of a federal judgment. ... Moitie has no application to the facts of this case.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The district court recognized a fundamental-constitutional-change exception to Moitie's finality rule and held that an intervening Supreme Court decision defeated claim preclusion.

    Capeletti Bros., Inc. v. Metropolitan Dade County · S.D. Fla. · filed

    Nothing in Moitie defeats this exception. ... Upon its review of Croson, the Court finds merit in Plaintiffs’ contention that the relevant constitutional law has undergone significant changes since the adjudication of the first suit. ... Accordingly, the Court concludes that res judicata does not preclude the present action.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The Supreme Court confined Moitie's second footnote to its case-specific context and held that claim preclusion is a defense that does not support removal.

    Rivet v. Regions Bank of Louisiana · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    The Moitie footnote, however, was a marginal comment and will not bear the heavy weight lower courts have placed on it. ... We therefore clarify today that Moitie did not create a preclusion exception, to the rule, fundamental under currently governing legislation, that a defendant cannot remove on the basis of a federal defense.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The district court applied a fundamental-constitutional-change exception to Moitie and held that Heller and McDonald defeated claim preclusion of a renewed Second Amendment claim.

    Justice v. Town of Cicero, Illinois · N.D. Ill. · filed

    Unlike Illinois law, federal common law generally does not allow new precedent to defeat claim preclusion. Though a change in statutory law may give rise to a new cause of action, “changes in case law almost never provide a justification for instituting a new action arising from the same dispute that has already been litigated to a final judgment.” Alvear-Velez v. Mukasey, 540 F.3d 672, 678 (7th Cir.2008) (citing Federated Dep’t Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U.S. 394, 398, 101 S.Ct. 2424, 69 L.Ed.2d 103 (1981) (“Nor are the res judicata consequences of a final, unappealed judgment on the merits altered by the fact that the judgment may have been wrong or rested on a legal principle subsequently overruled in another case.”)). ... For these reasons, the Court concludes that Heller and McDonald, taken together, constitute a fundamental change in constitutional law that is sufficient to defeat claim preclusion in Justice’s case. ... The Court therefore declines to rule that Justice’s Second Amendment claim is barred by claim preclusion.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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