Conklin v. Anthou
| Decision Date | 17 January 2012 |
| Docket Number | 1:10-cv-2501 |
| Parties | STEPHEN G. CONKLIN Plaintiff v. KRISTINE M. ANTHOU, et al. Defendants |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania |
(JUDGE MARIANI)
Plaintiff Stephen G. Conklin ("Conklin") filed this civil rights action alleging various deprivations of federal and state law. Conklin's claims arise under several theories including violations of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment constitutional rights pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1983 and § 1985, RICO claims under 18 U.S.C. § 1964, and pendant state law claims for fraud, theft, and conspiracy arising under 28 U.S.C, §1367. An array of Defendants, including state court judges, banking institutions, attorneys representing private lenders, and law enforcement officials are alleged to have deprived Conklin of a "fair hearing" on the merits of his state court action challenging the validity of a mortgage foreclosure, and subsequent sheriffs sale, of his residential property located at 100 Spangler Road, Lewisberry, York County, Pennsylvania. Conklin avers that several of the Defendants conspired to deprive him of his real property, and in the process, trampled his constitutional rights by depriving him of, inter alia, certain due process guaranties. Conklin appealed to this Court for intervention, most recently, in the form of a temporary restraining order to prevent his physical removal from thesubject property. Such an order was granted in order to permit the Court time to review the entire record and settle various jurisdictional questions raised by Defendants.
On December 16, 2011, pursuant to an Order of this Court (Doc. 93), the Honorable Thomas M. Blewitt, U.S.M.J., issued a Report and Recommendation ("Report and Recommendation") (Doc. 107) finding that the District Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to hear this matter under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and that Plaintiffs Motion for Preliminary Injunction should be denied. For the reasons set forth below, the Report and Recommendation (Doc. 107) is adopted in its entirety, Conklin's request for preliminary injunctive relief (Doc. 91) is denied, and the matter is dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
Conklin and his father are the residents of real property located at 100 Spangler Road, Lewisberry, York County, Pennsylvania ("Property" or "Premises"). On May 15,1997, Conklin and his late-wife executed a mortgage with Saxon Mortgage, Inc., in the principal amount of $235,600.00. That same day, Saxon Mortgage, Inc. assigned the mortgage to Texas Commerce Bank, and the assignment was recorded in the Office of the York County Recorder of Deeds on May 19, 1997. On November 11, 2005, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, successor to Texas Commerce Bank, assigned the mortgage to Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, with an effective date of June 18, 2002. This second assignment was ultimately recorded on January 4, 2006. In the interim, on October 20, 2004, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas assigned the mortgage to EMC Mortgage Corporation ("EMC"), and this assignment was recorded on January 3, 2006.
On February 10, 2006, EMC filed a complaint instituting a mortgage foreclosure action against Conklin and his wife alleging a default and detailing the specific amount past due. Only Conklin answered, and a default was issued against his wife in the amount of $442,047.35. Subsequently, on July 2, 2007, EMC moved for summary judgment as to Conklin, asserting that he defaulted under the terms of the mortgage, and again certifying the amount past due. On December 31, 2007, the Court of Common Pleas, York County, granted summary judgment in favor of EMC and against Conklin (Pa. Court of Common Pleas, York County, Docket No. 2006-SU-0433-06, December 31, 2007). After various attempts to delay the mortgage foreclosure process, including the Court of Common Pleas' August 18, 2008 denial of Conklin's Motion to Stay Execution, the Property was scheduled for a sheriff's sale in February 2009.
On June 17, 2009, the Pennsylvania Superior Court issued an opinion affirming the December 31,2007 decision rendered against Conklin in the Court of Common Pleas. Specifically, the Superior Court found:
Conklin's response to the summary judgment is comprised of bald assertions without any evidence backing them up. He states that the mortgage was not in default, that EMC's accounting of the amount due was flawed, and the EMC was not the true holder of the mortgage, but presents absolutely no evidence in support thereof.
EMC. Mortgage Corp. v. Conklin. 188 MDA 2008, at *4a (Pa. Super. Ct. June 17, 2009).
On April 20,2010, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania denied, per curiam, Conklin's Petition for Allowance of Appeal. See EMC Mortgage Corp. v. Conklin. 904 MAL 2009, per curiam (Pa. April 20, 2010). Conklin's Petition for Writ of Certiorari in the Supreme Court of theUnited States was also denied. Accordingly, there is a valid state judgment, affirmed on appeal, concerning identical facts and matters of law that Conklin raises in the present federal matter.
Pursuant to FED. R. CIV. P 12(h)(3), "p]f the court determines at any time that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, the court must dismiss the action." See also Bradgate Assocs., Inc. v. Fellows. Read and Assocs., Inc., 999 F.2d 745,749 (3d Cir. 1993)(when a district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over a matter, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require the court to dismiss the case).
Conklin invites this Court to review and reject various state court orders and judgments issued against him by the Court of Common Pleas, York County, and the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Notably, both the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of the United States have rejected Conklin's petitions for further appeals.
Although Conklin argues that he has suffered innumerable constitutional injuries, in addition to raising pendant claims under state law, these claims are, on examination, no more than an assertion of harms resulting from the valid legal judgments of state tribunals. Conklin argues that this Court should, in effect, hear an appeal from the Court of Common Pleas even after he has been given the opportunity to present his arguments to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, and subsequent petitions for leave to appeal have been denied by the highest courts in Pennsylvania and the United States. This is an entreaty we cannot grant, as the District Courtis without subject matter jurisdiction1 to undertake the review that Conklin requests, and lacks the requisite authority to enter a preliminary injunction as a result of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and the Anti-Injunction Act.
"The Rooker-Feldman doctrine is a judicially-created doctrine that bars lower federal courts from reviewing certain state court actions." Goodson v. Maggi, 797 F. Supp. 2d 587, 597 (W.D. Pa. 2011). The doctrine originated from two Supreme Court opinions issued over the course of six decades: Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 1303, LEd.2d 362 (1923), and District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462,103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983). The doctrine holds "that a United States District Court has no subject matter jurisdiction to review final judgments of a state court, because only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to review state court judgments under 28 U.S.C. § 1257." Goodson. 797 F. Supp. 2d at 597 (citing Feldman, 460 U.S. at 482,103 S.Ct. 1303). "The Rooker-Feldman 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): see also Gulla v. North Strabane Twp., 146 F.3d 168,171 (3d Cir. 1998). "This doctrine applies even where the challenges to the state court judgment allege that the state court's action was unconstitutional, such as a deprivation of due processand equal protection rights." Goodson, 797 F. Supp. 2d at 597 (citing Feldman, 460 U.S. at 485-86, 103 S.Ct. 1303 (citation omitted)).
The Supreme Court confined the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to "cases of the kind from which the doctrine acquired its name; 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." See Exxon Mobile Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284, 125 S.Ct 1517, 161 L.Ed.2d 454 (2005); see also, Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1005-1006, 114 S.Ct. 2647, 129 L.Ed.2d 775 (1994)(Rooker-Feldman bars losing party in state court "from seeking what in substance would be appellate review of the state judgment in a United States district court, based on the losing party's claim that the state judgment itself violates the loser's federal rights"); Howlett v. Rose, 496 U.S. 356,369-70, n.16 110 S.Ct. 2430,110 L.Ed.2d 332 (1990)(citing Rooker and Feldman for the proposition that "a federal district court cannot entertain an original action alleging that a state court violated the Constitution by giving effect to an unconstitutional state statute"); ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605,109 S.Ct 2037,104 L.Ed.2d 696 (1989)(Supreme Court rejected suggestion of the United States that loser in Arizona Supreme Court case should have filed a separate action in federal district court effectively obtaining "direct review of the Arizona Supreme Court's decision in the lower federal courts").
In the Third Circuit, there are four requirements that must be met in order for the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to apply: "(1) the federal plaintiff lost in state court; (2) the plaintiff'complain[s] of injuries caused by [the] state-court judgments'; (3) those judgments were rendered before...
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