Merry Morris v. Art Wroble , 206 F. App'x 915 ( 2006 )

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FILED
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
NOV 16, 2006
No. 06-13809 THOMAS K. KAHN
Non-Argument Calendar CLERK
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 06-80452-CV-DTKH
MERRY MORRIS,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
ART WROBLE, solely in his
capacity as a Judge of the Circuit Court of the 15th
Judicial Circuit in and for Palm Beach County, Florida,
MATTHEW STEVENSON, solely in his capacity as Chief Judge
of the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal,
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
_________________________
(November 16, 2006)
Before ANDERSON, BIRCH and HULL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
In this divorce-related case, Merry Morris appeals the district court’s order
dismissing her complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The district court concluded that
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine barred her complaint seeking declaratory relief under
42 U.S.C. § 1983. After review, we affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
Merry Morris (“Mrs. Morris”) signed a post-nuptial agreement (“the
agreement”) with her husband, Leland Morris (“Mr. Morris”). The agreement
contained a no-challenge clause providing that if Mrs. Morris challenged in court
any provision of the agreement, she would forfeit the $1.5 million paid in
consideration by her husband. Mr. and Mrs. Morris then divorced in August 2001.
In June 2003, Mrs. Morris moved to enforce and modify the agreement in a
Florida state court, claiming that Mr. Morris had violated the agreement and that
the agreement did not address child custody arrangements for birthdays, school
holidays, and Jewish holidays. Mr. Morris counterclaimed, seeking Mrs. Morris’s
forfeiture of the $1.5 million. After a three-day trial, the state court denied Mrs.
Morris’s motion to enforce and supplement the agreement, and awarded Mr.
Morris the $1.5 million plus interest and attorney’s fees. Mrs. Morris appealed the
judgment to a Florida intermediary appellate court, the Fourth District Court of
Appeal. On March 21, 2005, the state appellate court dismissed her appeal based
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on her continuing failure to satisfy the money judgment and the related contempt
orders arising out of it. In July 2005, Mrs. Morris petitioned the Florida Supreme
Court for a writ of mandamus to reinstate her appeal. The Florida Supreme Court
denied her petition on April 13, 2006.1
On May 5, 2006, Mrs. Morris filed the complaint here in federal district
court against two Florida judges in their official capacities, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §
1983. Mrs. Morris sought declaratory judgment that: (1) a Florida state-court trial
judge may not enforce a post-nuptial agreement that by its terms prohibits upon
pain of forfeiture any access to court for child custody and visitation issues as
violating federal and Florida constitutional rights; and (2) the Florida Fourth
District Court of Appeal may not refuse to hear an appeal challenging, on public
policy grounds, the federal and Florida constitutional rights of a parent. The
district court granted the defendant judges’ motion to dismiss under the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine.
Mrs. Morris timely appeals.2
1
On April 22, 2006, Mrs. Morris filed a petition for rehearing, which the Florida Supreme
Court denied on June 15, 2006–after she filed suit in federal district court.
2
We review questions of subject matter jurisdiction de novo. Brooks v. Ashcroft, 283
F.3d 1268, 1272 (11th Cir. 2002). On appeal, Mrs. Morris also contends that the domestic
relations exception to federal diversity jurisdiction does not apply. Because we decide that the
district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, we do not
reach this issue.
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II. DISCUSSION
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine limits the subject matter jurisdiction of the
federal district courts. See D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 476,
103 S. Ct. 1303, 1311 (1983); Powell v. Powell, 80 F.3d 464, 466 (11th Cir. 1996).
A federal district court does not have jurisdiction to review state-court decisions
where: (1) the party in federal court is the same as the party in state court; (2) the
prior state-court ruling was a final or conclusive judgment on the merits; (3) the
party seeking relief in federal court had a reasonable opportunity to raise its federal
claims in the state-court proceeding; and (4) the issue before the federal court was
either adjudicated by the state court or was inextricably intertwined with the state
court’s judgment. Amos v. Glynn County Bd. of Tax Assessors, 347 F.3d 1249,
1265 n.11 (11th Cir. 2003). “A federal claim is inextricably intertwined with a
state court judgment ‘if the federal claim succeeds only to the extent that the state
court wrongly decided the issues before it.’” Siegel v. LePore, 234 F.3d 1163,
1172 (11th Cir. 2000) (quoting Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 25, 107 S.
Ct. 1519, 1533 (1987) (Marshall, J., concurring)).
In the present case, the plaintiff, Mrs. Morris, was a party in state court.
Mrs. Morris obtained a final judgment from the highest state court in which review
could be sought, because the state appellate court dismissed her appeal based on
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her contempt conduct and the Florida Supreme Court denied her mandamus
petition that sought to compel the appellate court to hear her appeal.3
Mrs. Morris also had a reasonable opportunity to raise her federal
constitutional claims in the state-court proceedings. For example, Mrs. Morris
could have attacked, in the state trial court, the constitutionality of the no-challenge
clause in response to her ex-husband’s counterclaim for the $1.5 million.
Likewise, in the state appellate court, Mrs. Morris could have raised her
constitutional concerns about the $1.5 million judgment when she opposed Mr.
Morris’s motion to dismiss which was based on her failure to pay the $1.5 million.
Finally, the issue before the federal district court was “inextricably
intertwined” with the state-court decision, because Mrs. Morris’s claims succeed
only to the extent that this Court determines that the state courts wrongly decided
the issues. Mrs. Morris frames her request for declaratory judgment in general
terms, but she is seeking relief specific to her situation. To grant Mrs. Morris the
declaratory relief she seeks would mean that (1) the state trial court wrongly
rendered the monetary judgment for Mr. Morris pursuant to the no-challenge
3
We reject Mrs. Morris’s claim that the Florida state-court judgment was not final
because she had a petition for rehearing pending before the Florida Supreme Court. Mrs.
Morris’s petition for rehearing addressed the Florida Supreme Court’s denial of a petition for a
writ of mandamus, not the state trial court’s judgment against her or the state appellate court’s
dismissal of her appeal.
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clause and (2) the state appellate court incorrectly dismissed Mrs. Morris’s appeal
of that judgment.
Mrs. Morris also contends that the Supreme Court’s holding in Lance v.
Dennis, __ U.S. __, 126 S. Ct. 1198 (2006), interred the Rooker-Feldman doctrine
and that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine no longer survives. We disagree. In Lance,
the Supreme Court addressed the widespread conflation of the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine with claim preclusion and held that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine “does
not bar actions by nonparties to the earlier state-court judgment simply because, for
purposes of preclusion law, they could be considered in privity with a party to the
judgment.” __ U.S. at __, 126 S. Ct. at 1202. Lance did not inter the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine.4
III. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s dismissal for lack of
4
Further, in Lance, the Supreme Court stated that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine is limited
to those circumstances, articulated in Exxon Mobil, where a party “seeks to take an appeal of an
unfavorable state-court decision to a lower federal court.” __ U.S. at __, 126 S. Ct. at 1202
(citing Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 125 S. Ct. 1517 (2005)).
In Exxon-Mobil, the Supreme Court stated that a federal plaintiff presenting an independent
claim is not barred “simply because [he] attempts to litigate in federal court a matter previously
litigated in state court.” 544 U.S. at 293, 125 S. Ct. at 1527. We do not decide whether Lance or
Exxon Mobil require us to modify in any way our above four-part Amos test, because Mrs.
Morris’s claims fail under either test. Mrs. Morris appears before us in the exact circumstances
that Exxon-Mobil described the Rooker-Feldman doctrine applying: as a state-court loser filing
suit in federal court after the state proceedings ended, complaining of an injury caused by that
state-court judgment, and inviting a federal district court to review and reject it. See 544 U.S. at
291-92, 125 S. Ct. at 1526.
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subject matter jurisdiction.
AFFIRMED.
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