WILLIAM PENN APARTMENTS, Plaintiff, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COURT OF APPEALS, et al., Defendants.
Civil Action No. 13–178 (RWR)
United States District Court, District of Columbia.
Signed April 14, 2014
RICHARD W. ROBERTS, Chief Judge
The facts of this case provide an apt example. Although Plaintiffs promptly notified the prime contractor of their alleged underpayment and filed an administrative complaint with DOL in July of 2012, see Am. Compl., ¶¶ 22-23, DOL did not assign the matter to an investigator until February of 2013 or provide any response to Plaintiffs until April of the same year. See id., ¶¶ 24-25. The shorter limitations period would thus punish people like Plaintiffs for delays largely beyond their control.
The Court, therefore, concludes that because Plaintiffs’ DBA action is subject to a two-year statute of limitations, it is timely.
IV. Conclusion
For the forgoing reasons, this Court will issue a contemporaneous Order this day denying Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.
Jonathan Hale Pittman, Office of Attorney General, Tillman James Finley, Marino Law, PLLC, Jeffrey S. Jacobovitz, Arnall Golden Gregory, LLP, Washington, DC, for Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
RICHARD W. ROBERTS, Chief Judge
Plaintiff William Penn Apartments (“WPA“) brings suit under
BACKGROUND
From 1994 to 2004, defendant John Scherlis leased three apartments from WPA. Compl. ¶ 27. In 2005, WPA brought a suit (the “landlord-tenant case“) in D.C. Superior Court against Scherlis for non-payment of rent, obtained a default judgment against him, and evicted him from one of the apartments. Id. ¶¶ 48-54, 67.
In August 2008, the Scherlis defendants filed suit (the “damages case“) in D.C. Superior Court against WPA and Cafritz Company, alleging wrongful eviction, negligence, breach of good faith, and trespass, and seeking $18.5 million in damages. Id. ¶ 69. Also, John Scherlis moved to vacate the 2005 default judgment in the landlord-tenant case. Id. ¶ 75. Judge Hedge consolidated the landlord-tenant and damages cases and vacated the 2005 default judgment in the landlord-tenant case. Id. ¶¶ 95, 102. WPA appealed, and the D.C. Court of Appeals sua sponte remanded the case to the trial court. Id. ¶¶ 110, 123. The Court of Appeals’ September 9, 2010 order stated that “upon the entry of the order that resolves all matters in the consolidat[ed cases], if any party remains aggrieved, then they [sic] may file a notice of appeal.” Id. ¶ 123 (emphasis omitted). On remand, Judge Hedge granted partial summary judgment to the Scherlis defendants in the damages case. Id. ¶¶ 125-26. WPA filed an application for review of Judge Hedge‘s grant of partial summary judgment in the damages case, which the D.C. Court of Appeals denied. Id. ¶ 131, 135. WPA appealed the order vacating the default judgment in the landlord-tenant case. Id. ¶ 146. Judges Thompson, Beckwith, and Nebeker dismissed the appeal. Id. ¶ 154. WPA moved for reconsideration, which Judges Thompson, Beckwith, and Nebeker denied. Id. ¶ 159. In October 2012, Judge Rankin denied WPA‘s request to refer the damages litigation to Judge Hedge and ordered the case to proceed. Id. ¶¶ 160, 188.
WPA asserts that procedural and legal errors infected the entire litigation process in the landlord-tenant and damages cases and that the judicial defendants committed multiple due process violations. See id. ¶¶ 113, 136, 143-44, 169. WPA claims that Judge Hedge erred by failing to dismiss the damages case, allowing the Scherlis defendants to move to vacate the default judgment in the landlord-tenant case, and vacating the default judgment in the landlord-tenant case. Id. ¶¶ 166-71. WPA further claims that Judges Thompson,
WPA brought this suit in federal court seeking a declaration that Judges Thompson, Beckwith, and Nebeker‘s failure to hear the appeal in the landlord-tenant case deprived WPA of due process and an injunction to prohibit Judge Rankin and the Scherlis defendants from proceeding in the damages case until the D.C. Court of Appeals decides the appeal in the landlord-tenant case. Id. at 35. The defendants move to dismiss the complaint under Rules
DISCUSSION
I. MOTION TO DISMISS UNDER RULE 12(b)(1)
Jurisdiction is a threshold issue which ordinarily must be addressed before the merits of the case are reached. See Haase v. Sessions, 835 F.2d 902, 906 (D.C.Cir.1987); Walsh v. Hagee, 900 F.Supp.2d 51, 55 (D.D.C.2012). Rule
Federal district courts have jurisdiction over civil actions “arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States[,]”
Under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the Supreme Court exercises exclusive jurisdiction over appeals from the highest state courts. See Dist. of Colum- bia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923);
Before Exxon Mobil, the D.C. Circuit stated that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine barred lower federal court review of interlocutory appeals from state courts. Richardson, 83 F.3d at 1514. In Richardson, the plaintiff challenged an order from the D.C. Court of Appeals that temporarily suspended him from the practice of law. Id. He characterized the suspension order as an “interlocutory” order for which federal lower court review was available under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Id. Although the D.C. Circuit found that the state court proceedings in that case had resulted in a final decision, it opined that
[e]ven if the suspension were not final for purposes of
28 U.S.C. § 1257 , the district court would have lacked jurisdiction. We cannot imagine how one could reconcile Feldman‘s reasoning, based as it is on allowing state courts to arrive at decisions free from collateral federal attack, with the idea that the district court would be free to review Richardson‘s suspension so long as the decision was interlocutory. Indeed, other circuits have persuasively concluded that the boundaries of§ 1257 ‘s grant of Supreme Court jurisdiction do not prevent the application of Rooker-Feldman to the final decisions of lower state courts, or to state courts’ interlocutory decisions.
Id. at 1515. However, Exxon Mobil emphasized that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine can be applied only in “limited circumstances in which [the Supreme] Court‘s appellate jurisdiction over state-court judgments,
Since Exxon Mobil, courts have interpreted Exxon Mobil to have abrogated Richardson‘s holding in that the post-Exxon Mobil Rooker-Feldman doctrine applies only to final decisions after the state proceedings ended and does not apply to appeals of interlocutory orders. See In re Hodges, 350 B.R. 796, 799-801 (N.D.Ill.2006) (“For Rooker-Feldman to apply, the state court proceedings must have ‘ended,’ ... producing ‘state-court losers,’ ... before the federal action begins. And because the state proceeding must have ended, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine necessarily poses no jurisdictional bar to a federal action attacking an interlocutory state court order.” (footnote omitted) (quoting Exxon Mobil, 544 U.S. at 284, 291)). Similarly, the First Circuit stated that Exxon Mobil held that “[i]f federal litigation is initiated before state proceedings have ended, then ... the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not deprive the [federal] court of jurisdiction.... On the other hand, if federal litigation is initiated after state proceedings have ended, ... the federal courts lack jurisdiction.” Federación de Maestros de P.R. v. Junta de Relaciones del Trabajo de P.R., 410 F.3d 17, 24 (1st Cir. 2005) (citation omitted). Federación then defined when “state proceedings have ended” for the purposes of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine:
First, when the highest state court in which review is available has affirmed the judgment below and nothing is left to be resolved[.] ... Second, if the state action has reached a point where neither party seeks further action[.] ... Third, if the state court proceedings have finally resolved all the federal questions in the litigation, but state law or purely factual questions (whether great or small) remain to be litigated[.]
Id. at 24-25. Although the D.C. Circuit has not addressed this issue after Exxon Mobil, the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have relied on the Federación analysis to hold that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine applies only to cases where the state proceedings have ended. See Nicholson v. Shafe, 558 F.3d 1266, 1278-79 (11th Cir.2009); Guttman v. Khalsa, 446 F.3d 1027, 1032 & n. 2 (10th Cir. 2006); Dornheim v. Sholes, 430 F.3d 919, 924 (8th Cir.2005); Mothershed v. Justices of Supreme Court, 410 F.3d 602, 604 n. 1 (9th Cir.2005).
Here, WPA brings this
Previously, in Richardson, the D.C. Circuit held that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine precluded review of interlocutory orders from state courts. Richardson, 83 F.3d at 1515. Since Exxon Mobil, the D.C. Circuit has not considered whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine bars lower federal courts from such review. However, this action has not arisen when state proceedings have “ended” under the Federación analysis. There is no judgment for the D.C. Court of Appeals to affirm, the action has not “reached a point where neither party seeks further action,” and there were no federal questions in the litigation to resolve. See Federación, 410 F.3d at 24. Because state proceedings had not ended, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine presents no bar to WPA‘s having filed suit. Thus, the defendants’ motion to dismiss on Rooker-Feldman grounds will be denied.
II. MOTION TO DISMISS UNDER RULE 12(b)(6)
A court may dismiss a complaint for “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted[.]”
To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to “state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face.” ... A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (citation omitted) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007) and citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). A court may dismiss under Rule
In this case, WPA seeks to enjoin the ongoing damages case “until or unless Defendant D.C. Court of Appeals hears and decides the Appeal of the Order to Vacate the Default Judgment ab initio in the Landlord-Tenant Case.” Compl. at 35. WPA also seeks a declaration that Judges Thompson, Beckwith, and Nebeker denied WPA due process. Id. Thus, WPA seeks both injunctive and declaratory relief in this suit.
Here, the plaintiff fails to state a claim for injunctive relief under
in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer‘s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.
The D.C. Court of Appeals’ decision to decline WPA‘s appeal does not make declaratory relief unavailable because WPA could have petitioned for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court under
Because declaratory relief was not unavailable, and the challenged actions were official acts by the judges in their judicial capacity, the judicial defendants are immune from suit under
The defendants also move to dismiss the plaintiff‘s
fall prey to the logic that the state has a significant concern simply because property law, including eviction, has long been a state ‘concern.’ The difficulty with this assumption is that it would require federal courts to abstain from state litigation in virtually every area of state law—from consumer protection to real estate—even where the dispute is purely private. We agree with the Third Circuit that the regulation of eviction proceedings “does not implicate an important state interest” under Younger.
Id. (citing Ayers v. Phila. Hous. Auth., 908 F.2d 1184, 1195 n. 21 (3d Cir.1990)).
Here, the parties agree that the ongoing state proceedings are judicial in nature. See Judicial Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss Pl.‘s Compl. at 13; Pl.‘s Opp‘n to Jud. Defs. at 15. WPA argues that the Younger doctrine is inapplicable because the District of Columbia has no important “state interest” in barring federal jurisdiction over landlord-tenant issues and the ongoing litigation does not afford WPA an adequate opportunity to raise its federal claims. Pl.‘s Opp‘n to Jud. Defs. at 16. The judicial defendants counter that the District of Columbia has an important interest in “administering its landlord-tenant law” and that WPA “can raise its claims in the ongoing Superior Court proceeding, or on appeal in the Court of Appeals after a final, appealable order has been issued by the Superior Court.” Judicial Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss Pl.‘s Compl. at 13.
The defendants have not shown that Younger abstention applies. Although the ongoing judicial proceedings involve the District of Columbia‘s interest in maintaining and administering landlord-tenant relations, this interest, by itself, does not justify Younger abstention. The ongoing court proceedings between the Scherlis defendants and WPA is “garden variety civil litigation” and implicates no important state interest that would justify Younger abstention here. See Logan, 722 F.3d at 1168. Moreover, the defendants do not demonstrate that the District of Columbia has any special interest in the eviction proceedings that would justify this court‘s abstention. See id. Therefore, Younger abstention does not bar consideration of the plaintiff‘s
CONCLUSION AND ORDER
After Exxon Mobil, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not preclude lower federal courts from reviewing interlocutory state court decisions. However, the judicial defendants are immune from suit for injunctive relief under
ORDERED that the defendants’ motions [6, 8] be, and hereby are, GRANTED in part and DENIED in part. The plaintiff‘s
RICHARD W. ROBERTS
Chief Judge