Church of the Univer v. L. Auchmoody , 296 F. App'x 285 ( 2008 )

Opinions of the United
2008 Decisions States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit
10-20-2008
Church of the Univer v. L. Auchmoody
Precedential or Non-Precedential: Non-Precedential
Docket No. 07-4021
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"Church of the Univer v. L. Auchmoody" (2008). 2008 Decisions. Paper 347.
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NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
____________
No. 07-4021
____________
CHURCH OF THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD,
CONFLUENT BRANCH NO. 33478;
BRUCE W. NILES; PATRICIA NILES,
Appellants
v.
FARMINGTON TOWNSHIP SUPERVISORS;
EDWARD BRALEY; CONRAD HULTMAN; MARVIN A. BERGSTROM;
DAVID ENOS; GERRY BLOOMGREN; JAMES R. PENLEY;
JUNE JONES; JAD BIRT; L. R. AUCHMOODY;
FARMINGTON TOWNSHIP SEWER AUTHORITY; TODD FANTASKEY;
LARRY KOPKO, SHERIFF OF WARREN COUNTY;
HONORABLE PAUL H. MILLIN; NORTHWEST ENGINEERING, INC;
HAROLD BLOOMGREN; RUSTY VAN EPPS, Individually
____________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Pennsylvania
(D.C. No. 06-cv-00067)
District Judge: Honorable Sean J. McLaughlin
____________
Submitted Under Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a)
October 3, 2008
Before: FISHER, CHAGARES and HARDIMAN, Circuit Judges.
(Filed: October 20, 2008)
____________
OPINION OF THE COURT
____________
FISHER, Circuit Judge.
Plaintiffs Church of the Universal Brotherhood, Confluent Branch No. 33478,
Bruce W. Niles, and Patricia Niles appeal the District Court’s order dismissing their
complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Plaintiffs assert a myriad of claims
against various defendants, including agencies and employees of Farmington Township,
Pennsylvania, stemming from a state-court condemnation proceeding involving the
Church’s property in Farmington Township. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm
the District Court’s order dismissing the case.
I.
We write exclusively for the parties, who are familiar with the factual context and
legal history of this case. Therefore, we will set forth only those facts necessary to our
analysis.
On November 13, 2000, Farmington Township filed a declaration of taking in the
Court of Common Pleas of the Thirty-Seventh Judicial District, Warren County Division,
seeking to condemn a right-of-way on the Church’s property for the installation of sewer
lines. The Township named the Church, among others, as a condemnee in the action, but
did not name as condemnees either Bruce Niles, the pastor of the Church, or his wife,
Patricia Niles.
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The Church, which was represented by counsel, objected to the declaration of
taking and filed a series of responsive documents, including an affidavit from Bruce
Niles, contending that the condemnation would violate the constitutional rights of both
Bruce Niles and the Church. The Court of Common Pleas overruled the Church’s
objections and, on October 10, 2001, entered an order granting the Township a right of
entry to the Church’s property. The Church appealed to the Commonwealth Court of
Pennsylvania which, in an order dated May 21, 2002, affirmed the order of the Court of
Common Pleas. The Church then filed a petition for allowance of appeal with the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which was denied on December 17, 2002.
Over three years later, the Church, along with Bruce and Patricia Niles, filed this
action before the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
The crux of the plaintiffs’ complaint is that the defendants, “either acting individually or
in conspiracy,” deprived plaintiffs of their constitutional rights, disturbed their quiet
enjoyment of the land, and caused them emotional distress, first by condemning the right-
of-way without awarding them just compensation, and again by entering and placing a
sewer line on the Church’s land. On September 11, 2007, the District Court, adopting the
Magistrate Judge’s Report and Recommendation as its own opinion, granted the
defendants’ motions to dismiss on the grounds that (1) Bruce and Patricia Niles lacked
standing to assert claims involving property owned by the Church and (2) the Rooker-
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Feldman doctrine prevented it from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over the
plaintiffs’ claims. This timely appeal followed.
II.
We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and our review of
the District Court’s dismissal for lack of subject matter jurisdiction is plenary. Gary v.
Braddock Cemetery, 517 F.3d 195, 200 n.4 (3d Cir. 2008); Ballentine v. United States,
486 F.3d 806, 808 (3d Cir. 2007). A defendant’s motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) may be treated as either a facial or factual challenge to the
court’s subject matter jurisdiction. Gould Elecs. Inc. v. United States, 220 F.3d 169, 176
(3d Cir. 2000) (citing Mortensen v. First Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n, 549 F.2d 884, 891 (3d
Cir. 1977)). In reviewing a facial attack, which addresses a deficiency in the pleadings,
we must only consider the allegations on the face of the complaint, taken as true, and any
documents referenced in the complaint, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.
Id.; Turicentro, S.A. v. Am. Airlines Inc., 303 F.3d 293, 300 (3d Cir. 2002). “The plaintiff
must assert facts that affirmatively and plausibly suggest that the pleader has the right he
claims (here, the right to jurisdiction), rather than facts that are merely consistent with
such a right.” Stalley v. Catholic Health Initiatives, 509 F.3d 517, 521 (8th Cir. 2007)
(citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 1964-66 (2007)).
But when a 12(b)(1) motion attacks the existence of subject matter jurisdiction in
fact, “we are not confined to the allegations in the complaint (nor was the District Court)
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and can look beyond the pleadings to decide factual matters relating to jurisdiction.”
Cestonaro v. United States, 211 F.3d 749, 754 (3d Cir. 2000). In reviewing a factual
attack, “the Court is free to weigh the evidence and satisfy itself whether it has power to
hear the case. . . . [N]o presumptive truthfulness attaches to plaintiff’s allegations.”
Carpet Group Int’l v. Oriental Rug Importers Ass’n, 227 F.3d 62, 69 (3d Cir. 2000). The
party asserting subject matter jurisdiction bears the burden of proving that it exists. Id.;
cf. Ballentine, 486 F.3d at 810 (“On a motion to dismiss for lack of standing, the plaintiff
bears the burden of establishing the elements of standing, and each element must be
supported in the same way as any other matter on which the plaintiff bears the burden of
proof, i.e., with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of
the litigation.”).
III.
A.
The case-or-controversy requirement of Article III, § 2, of the Constitution is
satisfied only where a plaintiff has standing. Sprint Commc’ns Co. v. APCC Servs., Inc.,
128 S. Ct. 2531, 2535 (2008). We have summarized the constitutional standing
requirements as follows: (1) the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in fact – an
invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and
(b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) there must be a causal
connection between the injury and the conduct complained of – the injury has to be fairly
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traceable to the challenged action of the defendant and not the result of the independent
action of some third party not before the court; and (3) it must be likely, as opposed to
merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Ballentine,
486 F.3d at 814. “In other words, the plaintiff must show that he or she personally has
suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of
the defendant and the injury must be concrete and capable of being redressed by the court
should the plaintiff prevail on the merits.” Taliaferro v. Darby Twp. Zoning Bd., 458
F.3d 181, 188-89 (3d Cir. 2006). The Supreme Court has “always insisted on strict
compliance with this jurisdictional standing requirement.” Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811,
819 (1997).
Here, Bruce and Patricia Niles have failed to allege an injury in fact sufficient to
satisfy their burden to establish standing. The complaint contains allegations that the
property at issue in the state-court condemnation proceeding belongs to the Church, but
contains no indication that either Bruce or Patricia Niles has any ownership interest in the
Church or its property. Nor were the individual plaintiffs named in the condemnation
action as owners of the property, an omission they had ample opportunity to correct, had
it been erroneous, before the state court. Therefore, insofar as the plaintiffs’ claims stem
from either the condemnation proceeding or the actual installation of sewer lines on the
Church’s property, any potential injury in fact would have been suffered by the Church,
and not by Bruce or Patricia Niles. Moreover, the individual plaintiffs cannot assert third-
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party standing to bring the claims on the Church’s behalf; the Church is a party to this
action in its own right and, in order for a plaintiff “[t]o successfully assert third-party
standing . . . the third party must face some obstacles that prevent it from pursuing its own
claims.” Nasir v. Morgan, 350 F.3d 366, 376 (3d Cir. 2003); see Taliaferro, 458 F.3d at189 n.4.
Insofar as the complaint could be construed to raise claims based on conduct other
than the condemnation proceeding or the installation of the sewer lines, the individual
plaintiffs would still fail to meet their burden to establish standing. Plaintiffs have
alleged no other factual basis for their claims except for their repeated contention that the
defendants “perpetrated several acts, which infringed upon the constitutional rights of the
Church plaintiff and the individuals named as plaintiffs.” This generalized allegation is
plainly insufficient to satisfy the Article III standing requirements, and the District Court
did not err in holding that Bruce and Patricia Niles lacked standing to bring their claims.
Cf. Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 155-56 (1990) (“The litigant must clearly and
specifically set forth facts sufficient to satisfy [the] Art. III standing requirements. A
federal court is powerless to create its own jurisdiction by embellishing otherwise
deficient allegations of standing.”).
B.
Likewise, we find no error in the District Court’s conclusion that the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine prevented it from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over the
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Church’s claims. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which takes its name from the Supreme
Court’s opinions in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923) and District of
Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983), provides that the lower
federal courts lack jurisdiction to review final state-court judgments. The doctrine “is
based on the statutory foundation of 28 U.S.C. § 1257 and the well-settled understanding
that the Supreme Court of the United States, and not the lower federal courts, has
jurisdiction to review a state court decision.” Parkview Assocs. P’ship v. City of
Lebanon, 225 F.3d 321, 324 (3d Cir. 2000). “Since Congress has never conferred a
similar power of review on the United States District Courts, the Supreme Court has
inferred that Congress did not intend to empower District Courts to review state court
decisions.” Desi’s Pizza, Inc. v. City of Wilkes-Barre, 321 F.3d 411, 419 (3d Cir. 2003).
The Supreme Court has underscored the narrowness of the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine, explicitly limiting its application to “cases brought by state-court losers
complaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the district court
proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of those
judgments.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005).
Rooker-Feldman should not be conflated with preclusion law, and it “does not otherwise
override or supplant preclusion doctrine or augment the circumscribed doctrines that
allow federal courts to stay or dismiss proceedings in deference to state-court actions.”
Id.8
Here, the Church clearly “lost” the state-court condemnation proceeding years
before the proceedings in the District Court commenced. And the Church complains of
putative injuries caused by the state-court judgment: its complaint effectively seeks
“compensatory damages, punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs of litigation”
because the Court of Common Pleas allowed Farmington Township, in “conspiracy” with
the defendants, to condemn the right-of-way and install the sewer lines on the Church’s
land. Cf. Hoblock v. Albany County Bd. of Elections, 422 F.3d 77, 88 (2d Cir. 2005)
(“[A] federal suit complains of injury from a state-court judgment, even if it appears to
complain only of a third party’s actions, when the third party’s actions are produced by a
state-court judgment and not simply ratified, acquiesced in, or left unpunished by it.”).
Because a ruling that the Church was injured based on the condemnation of the right-of-
way or the installation of the sewer lines on its land would have required the District
Court to find that the order of the Court of Common Pleas was erroneous, the District
Court correctly concluded that application of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine bars the
Church’s claims.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the order of the District Court.
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