Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-01317/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-01317-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Mari-Lynne Earls
Plaintiff
Mary J. Greenwood
Defendant

Document Text:

ORDER; REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION – No. 19-cv-01317-LB

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

San Francisco Division

MARI-LYNNE EARLS,

Plaintiff,

v.

MARY J. GREENWOOD,

Defendant.

Case No. 19-cv-01317-LB

ORDER REFERRING CASE FOR 

PURPOSE OF DETERMINING 

RELATIONSHIP OR, IN THE 

ALTERNATIVE, ORDER TO 

REASSIGN CASE TO A DISTRICT 

JUDGE; REPORT AND 

RECOMMENDATION TO DISMISS 

COMPLAINT

Re: ECF No. 1

INTRODUCTION

Pro se plaintiff Mari-Lynne Earls brings this action against the Presiding Justice of the 

California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District to challenge a 2011 order by the Superior Court 

of California in the County of Santa Clara designating her a vexatious litigant pursuant to 

California Civil Procedure Code § 391(b).

Ms. Earls previously brought an action in this district last year raising a similar challenge to 

the Santa Clara Superior Court’s vexatious-litigant order. In February 2018, United States District 

Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed Ms. Earls’s complaint without leave to amend, holding that Ms. 

Earls’s challenges to the Santa Clara Superior Court’s order were barred by the Rooker-Feldman

doctrine. Earls v. Cantil-Sakauye, No. 3:17-cv-07122-VC, slip op. (N.D. Cal. Feb. 26, 2018), ECF 

No. 30 (Earls I). Ms. Earls filed an appeal. In December 2018, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the 

Case 3:19-cv-01317-VC Document 8 Filed 03/29/19 Page 1 of 5
ORDER; REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION – No. 19-cv-01317-LB 2

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dismissal of her complaint as barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Earls v. Cantil-Sakauye, 

745 F. App’x 696 (9th Cir. 2018) (Earls II).

Ms. Earls then filed this second action in March 2019. Like the claims in her first action, Ms. 

Earls’s claims in this action are barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine and must be dismissed.

Ms. Earls declined magistrate-judge jurisdiction.1 This case therefore must be reassigned. The 

undersigned refers the case to Judge Chhabria to determine whether this case should be related to 

Earls I, No. 3:17-cv-07122-VC. If Judge Chhabria determines that this case should not be related 

to Earls I, the undersigned orders the clerk of court to reassign this case to a randomly assigned 

district judge. The undersigned recommends that the newly assigned district judge dismiss Ms. 

Earls’s complaint with prejudice as barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

STATEMENT

In 2003, plaintiff Mari-Lynne Earls and her ex-husband signed a settlement agreement for 

child support before the Santa Clara Superior Court, which entered the settlement agreement as a 

judicial order.2 Ms. Earls was represented at the time by attorney Vanessa Zecher.3

In 2010, Ms. Earls filed five propria persona motions to vacate the 2003 settlement agreement 

and order and raising other challenges.4 Among other things, Ms. Earls argued that Ms. Zecher 

had told her not to trust family-court judges because “many of them are ill-tempered, ill-prepared, 

or just plain ill” and that Ms. Zecher had intentionally misguided her into accepting the 

settlement.5 Ms. Earls’s ex-husband, for his part, filed a motion to have Ms. Earls declared a 

 

1 Earls Declination – ECF No. 7. Record citations are to material in the Electronic Case File (“ECF”); 

pinpoint citations are to the ECF-generated page numbers at the top of the documents.

2 Order on Judicially Supervised Settlement, Earls v. Amdahl, No. 1-92-FL027294 (Cal. Super. Ct. 

Santa Clara Cty. Mar. 21, 2013) (attached as Compl. Ex. A, Earls v. Cantil-Sakauye, No. 3:17-cv07122-VC (N.D. Cal. Dec. 14, 2017), ECF No. 1-1). The court may take judicial notice of court 

filings, as a matter of public record. Mahoney v. Sessions, 871 F.3d 873, 876 n.2 (9th Cir. 2017).

3

See Compl. – ECF No. 1 at 8 (¶ 7), 9 (¶ 13).

4

See id. at 10 (¶ 16), 12 (¶ 21).

5 Compl. – ECF No. 1-1 at 2–3 (¶ 39).

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ORDER; REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION – No. 19-cv-01317-LB 3

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vexatious litigant.6In 2011, the Santa Clara Superior Court granted Ms. Earls’s ex-husband’s 

motion and declared Ms. Earls to be a vexatious litigant.7

Since 2011, Ms. Earls has attempted to get her vexatious-litigant designation rescinded but has 

been unable to do so.8 Ms. Earls alleges that this is in part because Ms. Zecher, her former 

attorney, is now a judge in the Santa Clara Superior Court and that Ms. Earls is facing a “‘wall of 

silence’ by judicial officers.”9

In December 2017, Ms. Earls filed an action in federal court in this district against the Chief 

Justice of the California Supreme Court, the Presiding Judge of the Santa Clara Superior Court, 

and the California Attorney General, alleging that the Santa Clara Superior Court’s designation of 

her as a vexatious litigant violates her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.10 In February 2018, 

Judge Chhabria dismissed Ms. Earls’s complaint, holding that “under the Rooker-Feldman

doctrine, this court lacks jurisdiction to engage in the de-facto review of state court judgments for 

legal error.” Earls I, slip op. at 1 (citing Kougasian v. TSML, Inc., 359 F.3d 1136, 1140 (9th Cir. 

2004); Branson v. Nott, 62 F.3d 287, 292 (9th Cir. 1995)).

Ms. Earls filed an appeal. In December 2018, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of her 

complaint, holding that “[t]he district court properly dismissed [Ms.] Earls’s claims regarding past 

or future enforcement of the prefiling order, and her inclusion on the Judicial Council’s vexatious 

litigant list, because such claims constitute a forbidden ‘de facto appeal’ of prior state court 

judgments or are ‘inextricably intertwined’ with those judgments” and thus are barred by the 

Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Earls II, 745 F. App’x at 697 (citing Noel v. Hall, 341 F.3d 1148, 

1163–65 (9th Cir. 2003); Henrichs v. Valley View Dev., 474 F.3d 609, 616 (9th Cir. 2007)). The 

Ninth Circuit further held that “[d]ismissal of [Ms.] Earls’s first amended complaint without leave 

 

6

See Compl. – ECF No. 1-1 at 3 (¶ 40).

7 Compl. – ECF No. 1 at 7 (¶ 1); Compl. – ECF No. 1-1 at 3 (¶ 40).

8

See Compl. – ECF No. 1 at 10 (¶¶ 14–15), 11–12 (¶ 21).

9

See Compl. – ECF No. 1-1 at 4 (¶ 43); see generally id. at 2–6 (¶¶ 38–50), 7 (¶ 53).

10 Complaint, Earls v. Cantil-Sakauye, No. 3:17-cv-07122-VC (N.D. Cal. Dec. 14, 2017), ECF No. 1.

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ORDER; REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION – No. 19-cv-01317-LB 4

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to amend was not an abuse of discretion because amendment would have been futile.” Id. (citing

Chappel v. Lab. Corp., 232 F.3d 719, 725–26 (9th Cir. 2000)).

In March 2019, Ms. Earls filed this action against the Presiding Justice of the California Court 

of Appeal for the Sixth District, again alleging that the Santa Clara Superior Court’s designation 

of her as a vexatious litigant violates her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.11

ANALYSIS

1. Governing Law

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. E.g., Owen Equip. & Erection Co. v. Kroger, 

437 U.S. 365, 374 (1978). “A federal court is presumed to lack jurisdiction in a particular case 

unless the contrary affirmatively appears.” Stock W., Inc. v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville 

Reservation, 873 F.2d 1221, 1225 (9th Cir. 1989). The plaintiff bears the burden of proving that 

her case is within federal jurisdiction. See, e.g., In re Ford Motor Co. / Citibank (S.D.), N.A., 264 

F.3d 952, 957 (9th Cir. 2001) (citing McNutt v. Gen. Motors Acceptance Corp., 298 U.S. 178, 189 

(1936)).

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine states that federal district courts may not exercise subject-matter 

jurisdiction over a de facto appeal from a state court judgment. Noel v. Hall, 341 F.3d 1148, 1156 

(9th Cir. 2003) (citing Rooker v. Fid. Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923); D.C. Ct. App. v. Feldman, 

460 U.S. 462 (1983)) . The doctrine governs “cases brought by state-court losers complaining of 

injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the district court proceedings 

commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of those judgments.” Mothershed v. 

Justices of the Sup. Ct., 410 F.3d 602, 606 (9th Cir. 2005) (quoting Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi 

Bk. Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 285 (2005)). “Under Rooker-Feldman, lower federal courts are 

without subject matter jurisdiction to review state court decisions, and state court litigants may 

therefore only obtain federal review by filing a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Supreme 

Court of the United States.” Id.

 

11 Compl. – ECF No. 1 at 16 (¶ 33); Compl. – ECF No. 1-1 at 1–8 (¶¶ 33–55).

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ORDER; REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION – No. 19-cv-01317-LB 5

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2. Application

The Ninth Circuit ruled that Ms. Earls’s challenges to her state-court vexatious-litigant

designation are barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Earls II, 745 F. App’x at 697. The Ninth 

Circuit’s decision is controlling here. The fact that Ms. Earls now names the Presiding Justice of 

the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth District as a defendant (instead of the Chief Justice of 

the California Supreme Court and the Presiding Judge of the Santa Clara Superior Court, as she 

did in her earlier case) does not change the fact that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine applies and bars 

her claims.

CONCLUSION

The undersigned refers the case to Judge Chhabria to determine whether this case should be 

related to Earls I, No. 3:17-cv-07122-VC. If Judge Chhabria determines that this case should not 

be related to Earls I, the undersigned orders the clerk of court to reassign this case to a randomly 

assigned district judge. The undersigned recommends that the newly assigned district judge 

dismiss Ms. Earls’s complaint as barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Because the defects in 

Ms. Earls’s complaint cannot be cured, the undersigned recommends that the dismissal be with 

prejudice. Cf. Earls II, 745 F. App’x at 697.

Any party may serve and file specific written objections to this recommendation within 14 

days after being served with a copy. See 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C); Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b)(2); N.D. 

Cal. Civ. L.R. 72-3. Failure to file written objections within the specified time may waive the right 

to review of the issue in the district court.

IT IS SO ORDERED AND RECOMMENDED.

Dated: March 29, 2019

______________________________________

LAUREL BEELER

United States Magistrate Judge

Case 3:19-cv-01317-VC Document 8 Filed 03/29/19 Page 5 of 5