Kafele v. Lerner Sampson , 161 F. App'x 487 ( 2005 )

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION
File Name: 05a1006n.06
Filed: December 22, 2005
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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT
AJAMU M. KAFELE and LISA BARCLAY, )
)
Plaintiffs-Appellants, )
)
v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED
) STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
LERNER, SAMPSON & ROTHFUSS, ) SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO
L.P.A., et al., )
)
Defendants-Appellees. )
Before: DAUGHTREY and COLE, Circuit Judges; HEYBURN,* District Judge.
PER CURIAM. Plaintiffs Ajamu Kafele and Lisa Barclay appeal an order of the
district court dismissing the complaint that they filed against defendants Lerner, Sampson
& Rothfuss, L.P.A., a law firm, and attorneys Amelia C. Roberts, Jill L. Dimitt, Robert
Charles Dix, Adam R. Fogelman, and Kathleen E. Kahman (collectively, “the attorney
defendants”), and against defendants Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, National City Mortgage
Company, IndyMac Bank, M&T Mortgage Corporation, Countrywide Home Loans, and the
Bank of New York (collectively, “the mortgage company defendants”). Addressing motions
to dismiss filed by several defendants under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), the
*
The Hon. John G. Heyburn, II, Chief District Judge for the Western District of Kentucky, sitting by
designation.
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district court held that, under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, it lacked subject matter
jurisdiction over the case and, consequently, dismissed the complaint and denied as moot
the plaintiffs’ motion for leave to file an amended complaint. Finding no error, we affirm
these rulings.
I. FACTUAL AND LEGAL BACKGROUND
The complaint in this case alleged that in 1998 plaintiff Lisa Barclay entered into a
series of agreements to purchase eight investment properties in the Columbus, Ohio, area.
To finance the purchase of these properties, Barclay secured financing from the mortgage
company defendants. After Barclay defaulted on her mortgage obligations on all of the
loans, each of the mortgage company defendants brought a foreclosure action against her
in the state court of common pleas. Judgment entries and foreclosure decrees were
entered against Barclay in all cases, and the properties were ordered to be sold.
Following the litigation in state court, Kafele and Barclay filed this lawsuit pro se in
the federal court in 2003, alleging, among many other things, that the actions of mortgage
company defendants and the attorney defendants violated provisions of the Fair Debt
Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692 (d-f), and deprived them of procedural due
process as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The plaintiffs also asserted that the attorney defendants had committed intentional breach
of fiduciary duties, fraud, defamation, and tortious interference with property rights, all in
violation of Ohio law, by filing foreclosure actions in state court against plaintiff Barclay.
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The district court characterized the claims against the mortgage company defendants as
an “attempt to appeal the prior state court adjudication” and held that the federal action was
prohibited as a matter of law by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. The district court also ruled
that the attorney defendants were immune from suit on the state law claims. The plaintiffs
now appeal the dismissal of the complaint.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Standard of Review
We review de novo a district court’s grant of a motion to dismiss on the basis of
subject matter jurisdiction. See Nihiser v. Ohio Envtl. Prot. Agency, 269 F.3d 626, 627 (6th
Cir. 2001). A district court’s denial of motions for leave to amend the complaint and to
vacate the judgment are reviewed for an abuse of discretion. See Hamad v. Woodcrest
Condo Ass’n, 328 F.3d 224, 237 (6th Cir. 2003); Hansmann v. Fidelity Ins. Inst’l Servs. Co.,
326 F.3d 760, 766 (6th Cir. 2003).
B. Rooker-Feldman Abstention
In District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983), the
Supreme Court held that federal court review of state court proceedings is jurisdictionally
limited to the Supreme Court of the United States. See also Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co.,
263 U.S. 413 (1923). Under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, a litigant who loses in state
court may not seek “what in substance would be appellate review of the state judgment in
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a United States district court, based on the losing party’s claim that the state judgment itself
violates the loser’s federal rights.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 125 S.
Ct. 1517, 1521-22 (2005) (internal citation omitted). See also Johnson v. De Grandy, 512
U.S. 997 (1994). The proper avenue to redress such grievances is application to the
United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to review a final decision of a state’s
highest court, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1257.
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine proceeds on two fronts. “First, in order for the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine to apply to a claim presented in federal district court, the issue
before the Court must be [inextricably intertwined] with the claim asserted in the state court
proceeding.” Catz v. Chalker, 142 F.3d 279, 293 (6th Cir. 1998) (internal citation omitted).
“Where federal relief can only be predicated upon a conviction that the state court was
wrong, it is difficult to conceive the federal proceeding as, in substance, anything other than
a prohibited appeal of the state-court judgment.” Id. (internal citation omitted). Second, the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine precludes federal court jurisdiction where the claim is “a specific
grievance that the law was invalidly–even unconstitutionally–applied in the plaintiff’s
particular case.” Id. (internal citation omitted). Exceptions to this doctrine of abstention
exist when plaintiffs attack the constitutionality of the statute or authority for the state court
proceedings themselves, see Howard v. Whitbeck, 382 F.3d 633, 639 (6th Cir. 2004), or
raise “a general challenge to the constitutionality of the state law applied in the state
action,” Catz, 142 F.3d at 293; see also Patmon v. Mich. Sup. Ct., 224 F.3d 504, 509-10
(6th Cir. 2000), but neither of these exceptions applies here.
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The district court in this case was correct in ruling that it had no subject matter
jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claims under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. That the
plaintiffs’ claims are indeed “inextricably intertwined” is evident from the fact that there is
simply no way for this or any other court to grant relief without disturbing the judgments of
foreclosure entered by the state court. Each of the myriad and vague claims set forth by
the plaintiffs rests on the premise that the state court entry of foreclosure was invalid. For
example, plaintiffs assert that the bank defendants and their respective attorneys
committed wilful fraud by bringing actions of foreclosure without being holders in due
course of their claims. But, the judgment of foreclosure issued in each instance implicitly
and explicitly finds otherwise. Likewise, the plaintiffs’ claims that the promissory notes
failed for lack of consideration is implicitly refuted by the state court judgment of
foreclosure. The judgments, entered in default, explicitly state that all necessary parties
were properly served. Without a holding that the state court was wrong on this point, there
is no way for this court to find that the plaintiffs’ procedural due process rights have been
violated.
At bottom, the plaintiffs seek to overturn the decrees of foreclosure, duly entered in
the courts of Ohio. This is an especially brazen request given the fact that they failed to
appear before those courts but then raised multifarious claims of federal, state, and
common law infractions created by the issuance of the state court decrees in federal district
court. Besides being utterly frivolous, the plaintiffs’ claims are “predicated on their
conviction that the state courts were wrong” and, therefore, satisfy “the very definition” of
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a case requiring Rooker-Feldman abstention. Tropf v. Fidelity Nat’l Title Ins. Co., 289 F.3d
929, 937-38 (6th Cir. 2002).
C. Dismissal of Claims against the Attorney Defendants
To the extent that the plaintiffs’ claims against the attorney defendants in this action
are distinct from the claims that attack the validity of the state foreclosure decrees, these
claims fall outside the parameters of abstention under Rooker-Feldman. The Rooker-
Feldman doctrine does not preclude federal courts from reviewing claims alleging that the
state court judgment was procured by fraud, deception, accident or mistake. See In re Sun
Valley Foods, 801 F.2d 186, 189 (6th Cir. 1986). Nor does Rooker-Feldman prevent us
from exercising discretionary supplemental jurisdiction over state law claims ancillary to the
dismissed federal claims. See, e.g., United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs, 383 U.S.
715, 725-26 (1966).
The district court granted the attorney defendants’ motion to dismiss pursuant to
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Noting that under Ohio law, counsel are
absolutely immune from civil suits for statements or defamatory remarks made during and
relevant to judicial proceedings, the court found that the plaintiffs’ claims were based solely
on actions taken by defendants in their representative capacities in the state foreclosure
proceedings, citing Windsor v. The Tennessean, 719 F.2d 155 (6th Cir. 1983).
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Although it is true, as the district court noted, that each of the plaintiffs’ claims
against the attorney defendants arises out of actions taken pursuant to their representative
capacity, the rule of absolute immunity applies only to defamation suits. Therefore, the
district court was correct in granting dismissal with respect to the plaintiffs’ defamation
claims. However, this ruling does not dispose of the remainder of the plaintiffs’ claims
against the attorney defendants.
Instead, we conclude that the rest of the plaintiffs’ claims must be dismissed for lack
of specificity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a). Traditionally, we have applied a
less stringent standard to the pleadings of pro se litigants than to pleadings prepared by
an attorney. See Urbina v. Thoms, 270 F.3d 292, 295 (6th Cir. 2001). However, pro se
litigants are not relieved of the duty to develop claims with an appropriate degree of
specificity. See United States v. Layne, 192 F.3d 556, 566-567 (6th Cir. 1999); McPherson
v. Kelsey, 125 F.3d 989, 995-96 (6th Cir. 1997). In the case at hand, the plaintiffs raise
dozens of claims that are lacking in both supportive factual allegations and directed legal
arguments. Despite the fact that plaintiffs are far from first-time litigants, and even given
the degree of latitude afforded the pleadings of pro se litigants, their’ claims against the
attorney defendants fall short of federal notice pleading requirements. At the very least,
“trial and appellate courts should not have to guess at the nature of the claim asserted.”
Moore v. City of Harriman, 272 F.3d 769, 778 n.7 (6th Cir. 2001)(Suhrheinrich, J.,
dissenting); see also Scheid v. Fanny Farmer Candy Shops, Inc., 859 F.2d 434 at 436 (6th
Cir. 1988) (“more than bare assertions of legal conclusions is ordinarily required to satisfy
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federal notice pleading requirements”). To the extent that the plaintiffs asserted claims
against the attorney defendants that are not entitled to absolute immunity, those claims
failed to conform to federal pleading requirements and were therefore properly dismissed,
although for a reason different from that given by the district court.
D. Other Rulings
The district court also denied as moot the plaintiffs’ motion for leave to amend their
complaint. We review the denial of a motion for leave to amend the complaint for an abuse
of discretion, see Leary v. Daeschner, 349 F.3d 888, 904 (6th Cir. 2003), and we find no
such abuse in this case. The district court likewise did not abuse its discretion in denying
the plaintiffs’ motion to vacate, alter, or amend the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 59(e), because the motion was not based on a change in the law, previously
unavailable evidence, clear error of law, or manifest injustice. See Firestone v. Firestone,
76 F.3d 1205, 1208 (D.C. Cir. 1996).
Finally, the district court addressed the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims under the Fair
Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1692, against the mortgage company
defendants. While noting that these claims were subject to dismissal under Rooker-
Feldman, the court ruled “for the sake of completeness” that the Act by its terms does not
apply to transactions that are not for personal, family, or household purposes, 15 U.S.C.
§ 1692(a)(5), and noted that the plaintiffs did not allege that the properties in question were
anything other than rental properties. Because we agree that Rooker-Feldman abstention
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is required, we decline to address the district court’s ruling on the merits of the plaintiffs’
statutory claims.
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons set out above, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.
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