Martin v. Kline, 1:03 CV 922.

• Decision Date: 06 November 2003
• Docket Number: No. 1:03 CV 922.,1:03 CV 922.
• Citation: 289 F.Supp.2d 597
• Parties: James L. MARTIN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Samuel I. KLINE, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania

Page 597

289 F.Supp.2d 597

James L. MARTIN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Samuel I. KLINE, et al., Defendants.

No. 1:03 CV 922.

United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania.

November 6, 2003.

Don Bailey, Bailey, Stretton & Ostrowski, Harrisburg, PA, for Plaintiffs.

David M. Donaldson, Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC), Philadelphia, PA, Adrienne C. Snelling, Sullivan, Sullivan & Snelling, Lebanon, PA, for Defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

JONES, District Judge.

Currently pending before this Court are Defendants' motions to dismiss. We have reviewed the submissions of the parties and taken into consideration the presentations made at oral argument. For the reasons set forth below, we will dismiss the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

PROCEDURAL HISTORY

James L. Martin, Ann L. Martin and Grace E. Martin (hereinafter collectively referred to as "Plaintiffs") filed a civil action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Honorable Samuel I. Kline (hereinafter "Judge Kline"), a judge on the Court of Common Pleas of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, and Lisa M. Martel, his court reporter (hereinafter "Defendant Martel"). The Plaintiffs claim that the Defendants have violated their First Amendment rights by their willful or negligent mishandling of a court transcript.

On July 9, 2003, Judge Kline filed a motion to dismiss based on lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, and for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted based on a defense of judicial immunity. On August 5, 2003, Defendant Martel filed an identical 12(b)(1) motion, and a 12(b)(6) motion on "absolute quasi-judicial immunity"¹ grounds.

BACKGROUND

On June 1, 2001, Judge Kline presided over a hearing in Lebanon County Orphans' Court division.² Defendant Martel was the court reporter, and in the course of her duties she later prepared a transcript. Plaintiffs subsequently submitted an "errata sheet" to Defendant Martel, alleging the existence of two errors in the transcript,³ and received notice that the sheet had been filed.⁴ The official transcript, which does not contain the corrections requested by the Plaintiffs, was certified as complete and accurate by Defendant Martel and approved by Judge Kline.⁵ According to the Plaintiffs, the court's failure to correct these errors was material to the underlying case.⁶

Though the procedural history of Plaintiffs' state litigation is unclear from their submissions, it is evident that Plaintiffs appealed what we assume was an adverse decision of the Orphans' Court and within their appeal raised the issue of the transcript's inaccuracies.⁷ In addition, Plaintiff James L. Martin stated by sworn affidavit that the state litigation has been inactive for more than two years and that a decision on the merits was issued in favor of the Plaintiffs.⁸

DISCUSSION

Standard of Review

Defendants move to dismiss this action on Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) grounds. The threshold question for this Court is whether we have subject matter jurisdiction to decide the case,⁹ and thus we first consider Defendants' 12(b)(1) motion.

Rule 12(b)(1) motions fall into two categories: facial and factual challenges to subject matter jurisdiction. Mortensen v. First Fed. Savings & Loan Ass'n, 549 F.2d 884, 891 (3d Cir.1977). The standard for factual 12(b)(1) challenges differs from that of both facial 12(b)(1) challenges and 12(b)(6) motions:

Because at issue in a factual 12(b)(1) motion is the trial court's jurisdiction — its very power to hear the case-there is substantial authority that the trial court is free to weigh the evidence and satisfy itself as to the existence of its power to hear the case. In short, no presumptive truthfulness attaches to plaintiff's allegations, and the existence of disputed material facts will not preclude the trial court from evaluating for itself the merits of jurisdictional claims. Moreover, the plaintiff will have the burden of proof that jurisdiction does in fact exist.

Id. (citations omitted). Accord Travis v. Miller, 226 F.Supp.2d 663, 667 (E.D.Pa. 2002); Daily v. Daily, 96 F.Supp.2d 463, 466 (E.D.Pa.2000); Altemose v. Charlestown Twp., No. 98-2862, 1999 WL 179759, *2, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4135, at *5 (E.D.Pa. Mar. 23, 1999); Adams v. Costello, No. 96-4377, 1998 WL 242600, **2-3, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6777, at *8-9 (E.D.Pa. May 13, 1998); Perlberger v. Cirillo, No. 96-6243, 1996 WL 684313, **1-2, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17519, at *3 (E.D.Pa. Nov. 26, 1996); Grand Fraternity Rosae Crucis v. Court of Common Pleas, No. 95-731, 1995 WL 572912, **5-6, 1995 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14096, at *15-16 (E.D.Pa. Sept. 27, 1995). White v. Judicial Inquiry & Review Bd., 744 F.Supp. 658, 667 (E.D.Pa.1990).

Defendants base their 12(b)(1) motion on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, thus raising a factual (rather than facial) challenge to subject matter jurisdiction. See, e.g., McCurdy v. Esmonde, No. 02-4614, 2003 WL 223412, *4, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1349, at *11 (E.D.Pa. Jan. 30, 2003) (stating that, since "Rooker-Feldman turns on whether the issues were or could have been raised in the state court ... or whether [they] are inextricably intertwined with the state court judgment," the issues raised by the instant 12(b)(1) motion are fact-based.)

Rooker-Feldman Doctrine

Under Article III of the Constitution and pursuant to relevant congressional statutes, federal district courts are courts of limited subject matter jurisdiction. Bender v. Williamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 541, 106 S.Ct. 1326, 89 L.Ed.2d 501 (1986); Employers Ins. of Wausau v. Crown Cork & Seal Co., 905 F.2d 42, 45 (3d Cir.1990). "District Courts are granted original, not appellate, jurisdiction in most instances," Ross v. Zavarella, 732 F.Supp. 1306, 1314 (M.D.Pa.1990) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 1331), and "lower federal courts possess no power whatever to sit in direct review of state court decisions." Port Auth. Police Benevolent Ass'n v. Port Auth. of New York, 973 F.2d 169, 177 (3d Cir.1992) (quoting Atlantic Coast Line R.R. Co. v. Bhd. of Locomotive Eng'rs, 398 U.S. 281, 296, 90 S.Ct. 1739, 26 L.Ed.2d 234 (1970)).¹⁰

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine dictates that lower federal courts cannot entertain constitutional claims that have been previously adjudicated in state court or that are inextricably tied to a state adjudication. "[F]ederal district courts lack subject matter jurisdiction to review final adjudications of a state's highest court or to evaluate constitutional claims that are `inextricably intertwined with the state court's [decision] in a judicial proceeding.'" Blake v. Papadakos, 953 F.2d 68, 71 (3d Cir.1992) (quoting District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 483 n. 16, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983)). Accord Guarino v. Larsen, 11 F.3d 1151, 1156 (3d Cir.1993). See also Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co. et al., 263 U.S. 413, 414, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923) (holding that a losing state court litigant may not invoke federal jurisdiction to attack a state court judgment on the ground that the court had unconstitutionally misapplied state law).

In attempting to delineate which claims courts may determine to be "inextricably intertwined," the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit was guided by Justice Marshall's insights in Pennzoil v. Texaco Inc.:

While the question of whether a federal constitutional challenge is inextricably intertwined with the merits of a state court judgment may sometimes be difficult to answer, it is apparent, as a first step, that the federal claim is inextricably intertwined with the state court judgment if the federal claim succeeds only to the extent that the state court wrongly decided the issues before it. 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.

Centifanti v. Nix, 865 F.2d 1422, 1430 (3d Cir.1989) (quoting Pennzoil, 481 U.S. 1, 25, 107 S.Ct. 1519 (1987) (Marshall, J., concurring)). In addition, the Third Circuit has stated that, as with the rules of claim preclusion, "[o]nce litigants' claims have been adjudicated in the state court system, they should not also have access to the entire federal court system". Guarino, supra, at 1157. Concomitantly, "federal courts have no jurisdiction to review state officials' compliance with state law." Blake, supra, 953 F.2d at 73 n. 5.

Rooker-Feldman also prohibits federal district court review of the decisions of lower state courts:

[I]f federal district courts are precluded, as they are, from reviewing the decisions of a state's highest court, even when those decisions appear to the district court to have plainly been in violation of the Constitution, then federal district courts are certainly also precluded from reviewing decisions of lower state courts, which are subject to correction and modification within the state court system.

Port Auth. Police Benevolent Ass'n, supra, 973 F.2d at 177. Further, the doctrine applies to claims that could have been raised in state court. Valenti v. Mitchell, 962 F.2d 288, 296 (3d Cir.1992). Thus, if a party fails to raise his constitutional claim in state court, it is waived and cannot be raised in the lower federal courts. Guarino, supra, 11 F.3d at 1161-62 (holding that a state court judge had waived his constitutional claims by failing to raise them before the state's supreme court). "`[I]t is appropriate to presume that the state court would have been willing to decide [the Plaintiff's] constitutional claims subject to rebuttal by clear evidence to the contrary' [and][t]herefore Plaintiff waived his constitutional claims and this court is powerless to override his waiver." Villela v. City of Philadelphia, No. 95-1313, 2000 WL 1972, *4, 1999 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19843, at *13 (E.D.Pa. Dec. 30, 1999) (quoting Guarino, 11...