Taylor v. Federal Nat. Mortg. Ass'n, 03-3320.

• Decision Date: 02 July 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-3320.,03-3320.
• Parties: Marietta TAYLOR, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSOCIATION, Waterfield Mortgage Company, and Burke, Costanza & Cuppy, Llp, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

374 F.3d 529

Marietta TAYLOR, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSOCIATION, Waterfield Mortgage Company, and Burke, Costanza & Cuppy, Llp, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 03-3320.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued February 12, 2004.

Decided July 2, 2004.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc August 3, 2004.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Zena D. Crenshaw (argued), Gary, IN, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Thomas A. Herr, Michael H. Michmerhuizen (argued), Barrett & McNagny, Fort Wayne, IN, Kathryn D. Schmidt (argued), Burke, Costanza & Cuppy, Merrillville, IN, for Defendants-Appellees.

Before CUDAHY, COFFEY and ROVNER, Circuit Judges.

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiff-Appellant Marietta Taylor lost her home in a foreclosure action brought in the Superior Court of Lake County, Indiana by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Waterfield Mortgage Company (Waterfield) through the law firm of Burke, Costanza & Cuppy, LLP (BCC) (collectively, the Defendants). Rather than directly appealing this judgment, Taylor filed a suit in state court alleging that the Defendants had committed extrinsic fraud and a fraud upon the court by instituting a wrongful foreclosure action against her in violation of two federal statutes. After the Defendants removed the case to federal court, the district court dismissed Taylor's suit with prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because it implicated the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Taylor now appeals, but for the following reasons, we affirm.

I.

When Taylor's husband died, her Social Security disability payments were temporarily suspended, though they were guaranteed by the Social Security Administration. Having no other income, she was unable to make timely payments on her mortgage and consequently fell behind on her account. In November 1998, Taylor received an offer of assistance with her monthly mortgage payment from the Calumet Township Trustee (the Trustee). But although the Trustee tendered payments for February 1999 and April-November 1999, these payments were refused because the loan had entered foreclosure and Taylor needed to pay attorney's fees of $1,235 in order to cure the foreclosure action before her account (which was approximately $2,000 in arrears as of December 30, 1999) could be brought up to date. Fannie Mae and Waterfield ultimately obtained a judgment of foreclosure from the Lake County Superior Court.

Instead of appealing this judgment, on August 21, 2002, Taylor filed a "Complaint to Vacate Judgment and for Compensatory As Well As Punitive Damages Based On Fraud Upon the Court" (Complaint) in Lake County Superior Court, claiming that the Defendants had committed a fraud upon the court by instituting a wrongful foreclosure action against her, which itself was alleged to have been in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq., and 42 U.S.C. § 1985. The Defendants removed the case to federal court and then moved to dismiss pursuant to Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for failure to plead her fraud claim with specificity.

Upon the district court's review of the Defendants' motion to dismiss, a jurisdictional question arose: whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine barred subject matter jurisdiction over the case. After the parties briefed the issue, the district court found that Taylor had requested the federal court to set aside the state court's judgment of foreclosure and that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine thus barred her suit. Moreover, the district court found that even if Taylor "recast the complaint another way, we would still be constrained to find that the action is inextricably intertwined with the state court judgment." (Appellant's Appx. at 27.) The district court found that the injury of which Taylor complained was caused by the state court's judgment of foreclosure, not by the acts of the Defendants. Since Taylor was found to have had a reasonable opportunity to raise her claims and to challenge the foreclosure in state court, the district court dismissed Taylor's suit with prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and remanded it to the state court from whence it came.

II.

We review de novo a district court's determination that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction based on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Brokaw v. Weaver, 305 F.3d 660, 664 (7th Cir.2002). The Rooker-Feldman doctrine derives its name from two decisions of the United States Supreme Court, Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 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). Simply put, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine "precludes lower federal court jurisdiction over claims seeking review of state court judgments ... [because] no matter how erroneous or unconstitutional the state court judgment may be, the Supreme Court of the United States is the only federal court that could have jurisdiction to review a state court judgment." Brokaw, 305 F.3d at 664. Therefore, if a claim is barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the federal court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the case. Id.

In applying the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the immediate inquiry is whether the "federal plaintiff seeks to set aside a state court judgment or whether he is, in fact, presenting an independent claim." Kamilewicz v. Bank of Boston Corp., 92 F.3d 506, 510 (7th Cir.1996). Claims that directly seek to set aside a state court judgment are de facto appeals and are barred without additional inquiry. However, federal claims presented to the district court that were not raised in state court or that do not on their face require review of a state court's decision may still be subject to Rooker-Feldman if those claims are "inextricably intertwined" with a state court judgment.¹ See Brokaw, 305 F.3d at 664. While "inextricably intertwined" is a somewhat metaphysical concept, the "crucial point is whether `the district court is in essence being called upon to review the state-court decision.'" Ritter v. Ross, 992 F.2d 750, 754 (7th Cir.1993) (quoting Feldman, 460 U.S. at 483-84 n. 16, 103 S.Ct. 1303). The determination hinges on whether the federal claim alleges that the injury was caused by the state court judgment, or, alternatively, whether the federal claim alleges an independent prior injury that the state court failed to remedy. See Long v. Shorebank Development Corp., 182 F.3d 548, 555 (7th Cir.1999).

Once we have determined that a claim is inextricably intertwined, i.e., that it indirectly seeks to set aside a state court judgment, we must then determine whether "the plaintiff did not have a reasonable opportunity to raise the issue in state court proceedings." Brokaw, 305 F.3d at 668 (citing Long, 182 F.3d at 558). Here, if the plaintiff could have raised the issue in state court proceedings, the claim is barred under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. If not, the suit is free to proceed in federal court (subject to any claim preclusion defenses). To establish that they did not have a reasonable opportunity to raise an issue in state court, federal litigants must

point[] to some factor independent of the actions of the opposing party that precluded the litigants from raising their federal claims during the state court proceedings. Typically, either some action taken by the state court or state court procedures in place have formed the barriers that the litigants are incapable of overcoming in order to present certain claims to the state court.

Long, 182 F.3d at 558.

A. Are Taylor's claims independent?

Taylor's first claim is that a fraud was perpetrated on the state court that granted the judgment of foreclosure. Although the relief Taylor prays for in her complaint with respect to all three of her claims is "to recover her home, or equal monetary value plus interest of 10% per annum, plus punitive damages," (Appellant's Appx. at 12, 13), the relief granted when a claim of fraud on the court succeeds is that the party claiming fraud is relieved from the judgment, i.e., the judgment is set aside. See Ind. Trial Rule 60(B)(3) ("On motion and upon such terms as are just the court may relieve a party or his legal representative from an entry of default, final order, or final judgment, including a judgment by default, for ... fraud (whether heretofore denominated intrinsic or extrinsic), misrepresentation, or other misconduct of an adverse party."). The district court correctly determined that requesting the recovery of her home is tantamount to a request to vacate the state court's judgment of foreclosure, the form in which Taylor's complaint in state court was in fact styled, and that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine barred granting that relief. See Facio v. Jones, 929 F.2d 541, 543 (10th Cir.1991) (holding that a plaintiff's federal action seeking to "vacate" a state court judgment was a de facto appeal and thus barred under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine).

Both of Taylor's claimed federal statutory violations, on the other hand, allow for money damages. See 15 U.S.C. § 1691e(a)-(b) (allowing civil actions under the ECOA for actual and punitive damages); 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3) (a party claiming a conspiracy to deprive her of civil rights "may have an action for the recovery of damages, occasioned by such injury or deprivation"). While recovery of her home is not available through these claims for the same reason her fraud claim is barred, the monetary damages Taylor claims are compensatory damages in the amount of the value of her home plus 10% interest per annum and punitive damages. The fact that Taylor is claiming compensatory damages in the amount of the value of her home (plus interest) demonstrates that her asserted injury is the loss of her home due to the Defendants' conspiracy to deprive her of her home, not an independent injury...