Carroll v. Hill
| Decision Date | 16 June 2022 |
| Docket Number | 21-3885 |
| Citation | 37 F.4th 1119 |
| Parties | Kim Arlene CARROLL, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Eva Arlene HILL, individually and as former Executrix of the Estate of Albert P. Barber; Michelle Barber; William A. Barber ; William D. Barber; Geauga County Park District, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
ON BRIEF: Aanchal Sharma, Mark M. Mikhaiel, SCHNEIDER SMELTZ SPEITH BELL LLP, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant. Philip D. Williamson, Julia B. Meister, TAFT STETTINIUS & HOLLISTER LLP, Cincinnati, Ohio, David H. Wallace, TAFT STETTINIUS & HOLLISTER LLP, Cleveland, Ohio, for the Hill and Barber Appellees. Todd C. Hicks, Bridey Matheney, THRASHER, DINSMORE & DOLAN, LPA, Chardon, Ohio, for Appellee Geauga Park District.
Before: SUTTON, Chief Judge; COLE and DONALD, Circuit Judges.
Kim Carroll claims that Arlene Barber submitted an invalid version of her brother Albert Barber's will to an Ohio probate court. Roughly 20 years after the court probated the will, Carroll allegedly learned that Albert was her father. That prompted Carroll to file this lawsuit, claiming that she should have inherited Albert's estate. The district court concluded that she lacked standing and that the probate exception to federal jurisdiction barred it from hearing her claims. We affirm for lack of standing.
Born in 1967, Carroll was raised by a single mother. Her birth certificate listed her biological father as "Wallace Hopper Lee." R.1 at 4. But Carroll never met anyone by that name. Save for a two-year period when she lived with another family, Carroll lived with her mother throughout her childhood.
Carroll and her mother lived near property owned by a man named Albert Barber. They spent a good deal of time with Albert during Carroll's childhood. Carroll also got to know Albert's younger sister, Arlene.
Albert died in 1998. Arlene administered his estate. In 2000, Arlene informed the Geauga County Probate Court that she had lost Albert's will and possessed only an unsigned copy. She filed an application to probate the will. The court found that all interested parties were given appropriate notice and admitted the will. The court distributed most of the estate—land worth $232,000 and slightly over $30,000 in other assets—to Arlene under the will.
Since the disposition of the estate in the early 2000s, Arlene has disposed of the land she received under the will. In 2003, she transferred a parcel to the Geauga County Park District. In July 2018, she transferred the rest to William A. Barber, the son of her brother William R. Barber. Carroll alleges that suspicious circumstances swirled around this last transaction: that William A.’s son prepared a quitclaim deed to transfer the property, that the transfer occurred while Arlene was in the hospital following emergency surgery, and that four months later a court ruled that Arlene suffered from dementia, leaving her unable to handle her affairs.
A month after this transfer, according to Carroll, Arlene told her that Albert was her father. Arlene allegedly knew the truth all along but concealed it.
In August 2020, Carroll sued Arlene, William A. Barber, his wife, his son, and the Geauga County Park District in federal court. Carroll raised 13 claims under Ohio law, alleging that Arlene swindled her out of an inheritance and that the other Barber family members wrongfully obtained property from Arlene. Now a citizen of South Carolina, Carroll invoked the federal court's diversity jurisdiction.
The district court dismissed the lawsuit. It concluded that Carroll lacked standing to file the lawsuit and that the probate exception to diversity jurisdiction barred the claims.
We start and stop with standing. To establish standing under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, a plaintiff must establish (1) an injury, (2) that results from the defendant's conduct, and (3) that a court can redress. Gerber v. Herskovitz , 14 F.4th 500, 505 (6th Cir. 2021). To fulfill the injury requirement, a plaintiff must allege she has suffered a concrete and individualized violation of a legally protected interest. Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife , 504 U.S. 555, 560 & n.1, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). A defendant's alleged misconduct must "personally harm the plaintiff." TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S. Ct. 2190, 2205, 210 L.Ed.2d 568 (2021).
Carroll has not plausibly pleaded that the Barbers’ misconduct injured her, that they left her any worse off. The heart of her claim is that Arlene deprived her of an opportunity to contest Albert's will. But even assuming the truth of all these allegations, she would not have been eligible to contest Albert's will when he died.
Ohio law shows why. Even if Arlene had notified Carroll of her relationship with Albert at the time he died, that revelation would have come too late. Under Ohio probate law, Carroll could not have contested the will during probate proceedings in 2000 unless she first brought a parentage action establishing Albert as her father within the permitted time—five years after turning 18—for doing so. Steinberg v. Cent. Tr. Co. , 18 Ohio St.2d 33, 247 N.E.2d 303, 305 (1969) (); Brookbank v. Gray , 74 Ohio St.3d 279, 658 N.E.2d 724, 727 (1996) (); Powell v. Williams , 185 N.E.3d 595, 599–600 (Ohio Ct. App. 2022) ; Byrd v. Trennor , 157 Ohio App.3d 358, 811 N.E.2d 549, 553 (2004) ; In re Est. of Hicks , 90 Ohio App.3d 483, 629 N.E.2d 1086, 1088–89 (1993) ; Beck v. Jolliff , 22 Ohio App.3d 84, 489 N.E.2d 825, 829 (1984).
By the time Albert died, however, Carroll no longer had this option. Ohio required her to initiate paternity proceedings before she turned 23. Ohio Rev. Code § 3111.05. Albert died when Carroll was 31. Arlene's failure to notify her about her relationship with Albert in...
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