Geiger v. Foley Hoag Llp Retirement Plan

• Decision Date: 27 March 2008
• Docket Number: No. 07-1208.,07-1208.
• Parties: David R. GEIGER, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. FOLEY HOAG LLP RETIREMENT PLAN, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

521 F.3d 60

David R. GEIGER, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. FOLEY HOAG LLP RETIREMENT PLAN, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 07-1208.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard October 2, 2007.

Decided March 27, 2008.

David R. Geiger, pro se.

Ann Wagner, with whom Frances M. Giordano and Rubin and Rudman, LLP were on brief, for appellee.

Before LIPEZ, Circuit Judge, CYR, Senior Circuit Judge, and HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

The genesis of this appeal is a contentious Massachusetts divorce. As part of the distribution of marital property, a state court judge assigned a portion of David Geiger's interest in three retirement plans & to his (now ex) wife, Karen Leeds. In addition to exhausting his state court appeals of the divorce order, Geiger filed suit in federal court against the retirement plans and their administrator,¹ seeking to permanently enjoin the plans from transferring Geiger's interests to Leeds. After Leeds successfully moved to intervene in the suit, she filed a motion to dismiss, which the district court granted pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. On appeal, Geiger contends that the district court first erroneously allowed Leeds's intervention, and then incorrectly granted the motion to dismiss. We affirm, albeit for reasons different than those cited by the district court.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PRIOR PROCEEDINGS

At the heart of this legal battle are the orders addressing Geiger's retirement accounts. Geiger claims that those orders are not Qualified Domestic Relations Orders ("QDROs")and are thus subject to ERISA's² anti-alienation provisions. 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3). This claim is predicated on his assertion that the federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether the orders at issue are QDROs. As our substantive analysis necessarily involves the sequence of events leading up to the orders in question, we first detail the largely undisputed trail of the case.

Geiger and Leeds were married in 1980. Following a trial, a divorce judgment was entered in June 2004. In dividing marital assets, the judge assigned Leeds benefits in three of Geiger's retirement plans. After entry of the divorce judgment, counsel for Leeds and the plans' administrators³ worked to effectuate the transfer of the retirement plans' benefits by drafting QDROs. This step is a crucial one, as benefits provided under an ERISA plan "may not be assigned or alienated" by a domestic relations order, unless the order "is determined to be a" QDRO. 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(1) and (3)(A). See Barrs v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 287 F.3d 202, 208-09 09 (1st Cir.2002). In December 2004, Leeds obtained model QDROs and QDRO procedures from plan administrators, and numerous rounds of back-and-forth correspondence ensued. The record reflects that Geiger was copied on all correspondence between Leeds and the plans.

Proposed QDROs were presented to the divorce court⁴ in January 2005. In response to concerns raised by the judge, additional revisions were made. Copies were provided to Geiger approximately two weeks before the next scheduled hearing. Geiger responded a few days later. He offered no substantive comment about the draft QDROs, but did provide Leeds's counsel with certain information she had requested about the plans. On the day of the hearing, Geiger filed a motion objecting to the issuance of any orders relating to his retirement plans. He alleged a host of substantive and procedural infirmities related to the divorce judgment as a whole. Most notably, Geiger included a footnote in his motion stating that he "does not ... address the issue of whether any order that might be issued would constitute a [QDRO]. Under ERISA, that issue is exclusively a matter of federal law for determination by the plan administrator and the federal courts." After making several modifications to the proposed QDROs, the court entered the orders, each of which is entitled "Qualified Domestic Relations Order," and retained jurisdiction to further modify them to "establish or maintain its qualification as a [QDRO]." Approximately three months later, after receiving correspondence from the plans' administrators that they considered the orders to be QDROs, Geiger penned lengthy letters to the administrators objecting to their conclusions. In September 2005, the plans rejected Geiger's objections and issued their final determinations that the court's orders were QDROs, and set out to effectuate the orders by establishing accounts for Leeds. Days later, Geiger commenced the instant action against one of the plans, essentially claiming that any transfer of his interests would violate ERISA because the orders were not QDROs. Soon after, he filed an Amended Complaint and ex parte Request for Preliminary Injunction, along with a proposed order.⁵ The district court granted the injunction request in October, premising its decision, at least in part, on Geiger's incorrect assertion that the defendant plans did not object. The court did not adopt Geiger's proposed order, however. Instead, it ordered Geiger to confer with Foley to create an agreedupon order. Such discussions never occurred. In fact, as Foley later pointed out, the defendants had not been served with the injunction request, and did not agree with Geiger's proposed order.⁶ Moreover, Foley claimed that it did not even learn that Geiger's request for preliminary injunction had been granted until December, when they were informed by Leeds's counsel. In the end, Geiger did not effect service upon Foley until January.

As these events were taking place in the federal court, Foley was also defending itself against contempt charges in the state court for not complying with the putative QDROs. Believing itself to be "stuck in the middle," Foley responded to the January service of process not by answering or seeking dismissal, but by submitting a motion for entry of a proposed order in April 2006, ostensibly seeking to have the court ratify the actions Foley took the previous September, when it learned of the original complaint. Geiger objected, due to differences between the two proposed orders, and the court scheduled a hearing for June.⁷ Two weeks prior to the scheduled hearing, Leeds filed a motion to intervene, pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 24(a). She simultaneously filed a motion to dismiss, invoking Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, abstention and claim preclusion. Over Geiger's objection, the court granted, without a written order, the motion to intervene. The court subsequently granted the motion to dismiss, relying on Rooker-Feldman. This appeal followed.⁸

II. LEGAL DISCUSSION

A. Motion to Intervene

Leeds sought intervention "as of right," pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 24(a), which provides that the court must permit intervention where her motion satisfies the following criteria: (1) the party must claim an interest in the property; (2) disposition of the case without intervention, would, "as a practical matter, impair or impede [the party's] ability to protect that interest"; (3) the party's interest is inadequately represented by the existing parties; and (4) the motion for intervention is timely made. Travelers Indem. Co. v. Dingwell, 884 F.2d 629, 637 (1st Cir.1989).

Our standard of review on appeal is for abuse of discretion. Daggett v. Comm'n on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, 172 F.3d 104, 109 (1st Cir.1999). Where, as here, the district court made no specific findings, we can do so, relying on the record. Banco Popular de Puerto Rico v. Greenblatt, 964 F.2d 1227, 1230 (1st Cir.1992).

Geiger first argues that Leeds's motion was untimely. We disagree. Initially, we note that the case had not progressed beyond the initial stages when the motion was filed. See id. at 1231 ("The more advanced the litigation, the more ... scrutiny the motion must withstand.") Here, no action beyond the filing of the Amended Complaint had occurred. Despite the fact the court granted Geiger's motion for preliminary injunction, he took no action to effectuate it, not even serving Foley until January. Nor did he press for an Answer after the expiration of 20 days from service. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(a). Indeed, at the time of the motion to intervene, the only pending item was a scheduled hearing in which the court would consider the two competing injunction proposals. In the absence of any discovery or substantive legal progress, we cannot say the litigation was in any way at an "advanced stage." In addition to the progress of the case, a timeliness determination turns on other factors: 1) the length of time the intervenor knew her interest was imperiled; 2) the foreseeable prejudice to the existing parties if intervention is granted, or to the intervenor if it is denied; and 3) any "idiosyncratic circumstances" which weigh for or against intervention. Banco Popular, 964 F.2d at 1230. Here, although Leeds was aware of the lawsuit for approximately nine months before seeking intervention, we agree with Leeds that it was not until Foley declined to answer the complaint but instead sought an order that would effectively prevent its near-term compliance with the divorce judgment that she became aware that her interests were imperiled. Until that time, she had reasonably thought that Foley would aggressively defend the position it took in the divorce proceeding — that the orders were QDROs.⁹ Next, we find the balance of prejudices to weigh heavily in favor of Leeds. Under either Geiger's or Foley's proposed injunctions, transfer of the plans' interests to Leeds would be indefinitely delayed. Given that the state appeals court affirmed the award of the interest in the plans "to address the disparity in the amount of the equity in the home awarded to each party and to ... leave both parties with relatively equivalent assets and resources," T.C. v. J.L., 2006 WL 3019223 at *6, the prejudice to Leeds is readily apparent. On the other hand, Geiger's...