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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted March 30, 2015*

Decided April 8, 2015 

Before 

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge 

RICHARD D. CUDAHY, Circuit Judge 

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

No. 14-2952 

CRAIG ISAM RIDDLE, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL 

TRUST COMPANY, et al., 

 Defendants-Appellees.

 Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Central District of Illinois. 

No. 14-3019 

Colin S. Bruce, 

Judge. 

O R D E R 

 After Craig Riddle and his wife defaulted on their home mortgage, the lender 

foreclosed, the house was sold at an auction, and in 2010 an Illinois circuit court 

confirmed the sale. The Riddles later asked the circuit court to set aside the foreclosure; 

the court declined, and that decision was upheld on appeal in late 2012. More than a year 

later, in January 2014, Craig filed this action. For the most part, he asserts violations of 

state law. He cannot rely on diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, because both 

 

*

 After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is 

unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the briefs and record. See FED. R. APP. P.

34(a)(2)(C). 

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION 

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 

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No. 14-2952 Page 2 

he and several defendants are citizens of Illinois and thus complete diversity is lacking. 

See Newman-Green, Inc. v. Alfonzo-Larrain, 490 U.S. 826, 829 (1989). But Riddle also 

claimed, invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, that the defendants had engaged in a grand 

conspiracy to deprive him of property without due process. The district court assumed 

the existence of a federal claim but found that Riddle’s entire suit is barred by the 

Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983); Rooker 

v. Fid. Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923). To a large extent, we agree with that analysis; the 

only exception relates to one part of the case that is outside the Rooker-Feldman ban, but 

that fails for want of jurisdiction on other grounds. We therefore affirm the district 

court’s judgment. 

 Riddle’s complaint names as a defendant nearly every participant in the 

foreclosure proceedings: the lender and loan servicers, their lawyers, the process server, 

the judge who presided over the foreclosure proceedings, the clerk of the circuit court, 

the company selected to oversee the judicial sale of Riddle’s house, and the lawyers 

Riddle and his wife hired to “undo” the foreclosure. All of the named defendants, says 

Riddle, conspired to conceal the alleged fact that the couple was not served properly 

with the foreclosure suit. (Riddle insists that the clerk of the circuit court did not issue 

the summons until after the delivery date shown by the process server.) It follows, Riddle 

continues, that the circuit court did not have jurisdiction over him because of the 

defective service of process. He asked for “quiet title” and declaratory relief. As we 

noted earlier, the Illinois courts were unpersuaded by these arguments. Deutsche Bank 

Nat’l Trust Co. v. Riddle, 2012 IL App (4th) 111064-U. 

We are skeptical that Riddle’s current lawsuit is substantial enough even to 

invoke the district court’s federal-question jurisdiction (indeed, Riddle’s complaint 

characterizes the alleged Fourteenth Amendment conspiracy as “grandiose”). 

See Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 537–38 (1974); Goros v. County of Cook, 489 F.3d 857, 

859–60 (7th Cir. 2007). And if there is no basis for federal jurisdiction over at least one 

claim, Riddle cannot rely on supplemental jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367; Avila v. 

Pappas, 591 F.3d 552, 555 (7th Cir. 2010); In re African-Am. Slave Descendants Litig., 471 F.3d 

754, 757–58 (7th Cir. 2006). In any event, even if we were to hold that Riddle’s Fourteenth 

Amendment claim meets the standard of Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 682-83 (1946), we 

agree with the district judge that Rooker-Feldman requires the dismissal of most of the 

case. 

Riddle tries to resist this outcome with the argument that the Rooker-Feldman

doctrine does not apply because the state-court judgment (as he sees it) is not the cause 

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of his injury. Rather, says Riddle, he was injured when the conspirators deprived him of 

due process and violated state law by foreclosing on his house knowing that service of 

process was defective. Yet it was the state-court judgment that authorized the foreclosure 

and subsequent sale of Riddle’s house. Riddle’s federal lawsuit is thus an attack on that 

judgment and is barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi 

Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005); Crawford v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 647 

F.3d 642, 646–47 (7th Cir. 2011); Taylor v. Fed. Nat’l Mortg. Ass’n, 374 F.3d 529, 532–33 (7th 

Cir. 2004). 

Riddle’s state-law claims against Jennings, Lindsay & Luckman, LLC, the law 

firm he hired to “undo” the foreclosure, fails for a different reason. It is not barred by the 

Rooker-Feldman doctrine, because he did not hire the firm until after the state-court 

judgment had been entered and his complaint against it involves an injury in the nature 

of legal malpractice, which is separate from the foreclosure process. The district court 

lacked jurisdiction over that part of the case, however, because the parties are not 

diverse and it cannot be saved by supplemental jurisdiction. See Newman-Green, 490 U.S. 

at 829; In re African-Am. Slave Descendants Litig., 471 F.3d at 757–58. 

Accordingly, the district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED.

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