Bruce v. U.S. Bank N.A.
| Decision Date | 02 May 2019 |
| Docket Number | No. 18-10553,18-10553 |
| Parties | ROY W. BRUCE, ALICE BRUCE, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, as Trustee Successor in Interest to Bank of America, National Association as Trustee, Successor by Merger to Lasalle Bank National Association, as Trustee for Structured Asset Securities Corporation Mortgage Pass Through, ALBERTELLI LAW, U.S. BANK N.A., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
Non-Argument Calendar
D.C. Docket No. 8:17-cv-02023-VMC-JSS
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida Before MARTIN, JILL PRYOR, and BRANCH, Circuit Judges.
Pro se litigants Roy and Alice Bruce filed suit against U.S. Bank, N.A. as Trustee, Successor in Interest, to Bank of America, N.A., as Trustee, Successor by Merger, to LaSalle Bank, N.A., as Trustee for Structured Asset Securities Corporation Mortgage Pass-Through ("U.S. Bank"), and Albertelli Law (collectively, "Defendants"). The Bruces alleged violations under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act ("FDCPA"), 15 U.S.C. § 1692e, as well as a state law claim for damages under the Florida Consumer Collections Practices Act ("FCCPA").
Defendants filed a motion to dismiss the Bruces' complaint, which the district court granted. In granting the motion, the district court dismissed the Bruces' FDCPA claim with prejudice because the district court found that all of the allegations contained in the Bruces' complaint were time barred. The court also dismissed the Bruces' state law claim without prejudice, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction.
The Bruces timely appealed the district court's order, arguing that the district court erred by failing to construe liberally their pro se complaint when it dismissed their FDCPA claims with prejudice without first granting them leave to amend. The district court was correct that the Bruces' claims, as pleaded in the complaint, wereoutside the statute of limitations and that allowing the Bruces to amend their complaint would have been futile. Accordingly, we affirm.
The Bruces own property in Ruskin, Florida. Chad Hill, a non-party to this suit, is a previous owner of the property. He executed a mortgage and note, which are the subject of a separate state court foreclosure action that was instituted in 2014 by U.S. Bank.1
On March 25, 2015, Hill sent written notice purporting to rescind unilaterally his 2004 note and mortgage on the property. Roy Bruce and Hill then filed a complaint in small claims court against U.S. Bank on September 21, 2015 alleging violations of the FDCPA and FCCPA based on Hill's alleged rescission of the loan. After U.S. Bank did not appear in court, Roy Bruce and Hill obtained a default judgment against U.S. Bank in October 2015. The amount of the judgment was $5,310, which U.S. Bank fully paid in June 2016.
U.S. Bank nonetheless continued to pursue its state court mortgage foreclosure action against the property and continued their related collection activity,arguing that the debt remains valid and subject to collection. The Bruces argue that communications they received from U.S. Bank after the October 2015 default judgment were improper attempted collection efforts.
The Bruces2 filed this lawsuit against U.S. Bank and Albertelli Law3 on August 24, 2017. Their verified complaint contains three counts and seeks (1) injunctive relief from Defendants, (2) money damages under the FDCPA, and (3) money damages under the FCCPA. The Bruces argue that the default judgment they obtained in small claims court is a complete bar against all efforts by U.S. Bank to foreclose the note and mortgage obtained from Hill, and so U.S. Bank's attempts "to collect from Plaintiffs on the rescinded transaction subject to the state court October 29th 2015 judgment" violate the FDCPA and FCCPA. The Bruces attached several documents to their complaint, including three letters from U.S. Bank to Alice Bruce regarding the mortgage loan for the property in Ruskin, Florida: (1) a January 7, 2015 letter, in response to her earlier communication, indicating that it did not own a mortgage loan for her property in Ruskin, Florida; (2) an April 28, 2015 letter from U.S. Bank indicating that it was not the owner of her mortgage, it was the trustee for the Trust that owned the property, it had no involvement in the foreclosureproceedings, it did not acknowledge Alice's assertation that her correspondence with it settled the debt she owed, and directing her to contact Chase as the servicer of the property; and (3) a May 27, 2015 letter from Chase, in response to her letter forwarded from U.S. Bank, indicating that it did not have a record of a mortgage loan for her property in Ruskin, but did have a mortgage loan for her property in Lakeland, Florida, which had a payment due on May 1, 2015.4
Defendants promptly moved to dismiss the Bruces' complaint for failure to state a claim, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). Notably, Defendants argued that the Bruces were not entitled to relief under the FDCPA because their complaint was untimely, as the letters they attached to their complaint were all from 2015; the FDCPA statute of limitations is one year, and the Bruces filed their complaint two years after the most recent letter.
The district court granted Defendants' motion to dismiss. It determined that, after a "cursory review" of the Bruces' complaint, the FDCPA claim was time-barred under the one-year statute of limitations. Thus, the Bruces' conclusory statements that the communications giving rise to their FDCPA claims occurredwithin the statute of limitations, without any further information, did not support a conclusion that their claim was timely.
Alternatively, the court determined that the Bruces' complaint did not show that the Bruces were consumers suffering at the hands of debt collectors under the FDCPA, as they did not allege that U.S. Bank and Albertelli Law were trying to collect a debt from them. The court noted that Defendants' foreclosure attempts on the property did not support a FDCPA claim: a foreclosure complaint is not a prohibited communication under the FDCPA, and non-party Hill appeared to be the obligor under the note. Even under a liberal construction of the complaint, the court determined that the Bruces' complaint and exhibits did not support their FDCPA claim. Furthermore, after finding the FDCPA claim to be the only basis for federal jurisdiction in the complaint, the district court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the Bruces' remaining state law claim. Accordingly, the district court dismissed with prejudice the FDCPA claim as time-barred and dismissed the state law claim without prejudice.
The Bruces then moved for reconsideration, requesting oral argument and leave to file an Amended Complaint. The Bruces argued that the district court erred when it dismissed their pro se complaint without liberally construing the allegations contained within and that the court abused its discretion by dismissing their complaint with prejudice without first granting them leave to amend.
The district court denied the Bruces' motion for reconsideration. It concluded that the Bruces had failed to identify any change in the controlling law or any new evidence that would warrant a different result. The court also stated that it did not hold the Bruces to the same standards as counseled plaintiffs but was nevertheless required to dismiss the complaint because the Bruces, regardless of their pro se status, alleged FDCPA claims that were time-barred. The court emphasized that the motion was denied because granting the Bruces leave to amend would have been futile, as the Bruces had failed to identify how amending the complaint could have cured the timeliness and legal deficiencies of their complaint.
The Bruces timely appealed.
We review a district court's ruling on a Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss de novo. Hill v. White, 321 F.3d 1334, 1335 (11th Cir. 2003).
We review the district court's decision not to exercise supplemental jurisdiction for abuse of discretion. Lucero v. Trosch, 121 F.3d 591, 598 (11th Cir. 1997). We also review a district court's denial of leave to amend for abuse of discretion. See Woldeab v. DeKalb Cty. Bd. of Educ., 885 F.3d 1289, 1291 (11th Cir. 2018).
In order to reverse a district court order that is based on multiple, independent grounds, a party must convince us "that every stated ground for the judgment againsthim is incorrect." Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 678, 680 (11th Cir. 2014) (emphasis added).
To survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, "a complaint must [ ] contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Am. Dental Ass'n v. Cigna Corp., 605 F.3d 1283, 1289 (11th Cir. 2010) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). "A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Brooks v. Warden, 800 F.3d 1295, 1300 (11th Cir. 2015) (quotation marks omitted).
For purposes of Rule 12(b)(6), "[a] court is generally limited to reviewing what is within the four corners of the complaint on a motion to dismiss." Bickley v. Caremark RX, Inc., 461 F.3d 1325, 1329 n.7 (11th Cir. 2006). However, "where the plaintiff refers to certain documents in the complaint and those documents are central to the plaintiff's claim, then the Court may consider the documents part of the pleadings for purposes of Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal." Brooks v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Florida, Inc., 116 F.3d 1364, 1369 (11th Cir. 1997).
We acknowledge that pro se pleadings are held to a less stringent standard than those drafted by attorneys and are thus liberally...
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