Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02732/USCOURTS-ca7-15-02732-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Trina L. Carpenter
Appellant
PNC Bank, National Association
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit 

Chicago, Illinois 60604 

Submitted February 3, 2016*

Decided February 3, 2016 

Before 

DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge 

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

No. 15-2732 

TRINA L. CARPENTER, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v. 

PNC BANK, NATIONAL 

ASSOCIATION, 

 Defendant-Appellee. 

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 

Eastern Division. 

No. 15 C 6135 

Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, 

Judge. 

ORDER 

 Trina Carpenter brought this federal suit to challenge the validity of a recent 

foreclosure judgment entered against her in state court. The district court dismissed her 

suit at screening for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. We affirm. 

 

*

 Appellee PNC Bank was not served with process in the district court and is not 

participating in this appeal. After examining the appellant’s brief and the record, we 

have concluded that oral argument is unnecessary. Thus the appeal is submitted on the 

brief and the 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NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION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. 15-2732 Page 2 

 We present the facts alleged in Carpenter’s complaint (as clarified in her appellate 

brief), which we accept as true for purposes of this appeal. See Carlson v. CSX Transp., 

Inc., 758 F.3d 819, 823 (7th Cir. 2014). Carpenter took out a mortgage in 2004 to purchase 

a house in Chicago. Five years later the pipes in the house burst, causing substantial 

water damage. Her insurance company denied coverage for most of the damage, so she 

sued it in state court, leading to a settlement. Around the same time, the mortgage 

holder, PNC Bank, filed a foreclosure complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County. 

The state trial court issued a judgment of foreclosure against Carpenter in May 2015. 

 Carpenter then sued PNC Bank in federal court. She characterizes her federal 

action as “an ongoing case from the lower court of Cook County.” The foreclosure 

judgment, she asserts, resulted from “insufficient information and incomplete loan 

history.” Because the foreclosure suit was unfounded, Carpenter contends that the 

judgment allowed PNC Bank to get away with “unfair business practices” and 

“harassment” of Carpenter and her family. PNC’s actions, she contends, violated her 

civil rights under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, and 1986. The district court dismissed her 

complaint at screening, see 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, concluding that it lacked jurisdiction to 

interfere in state court proceedings. 

 On appeal Carpenter identifies no error in the district court’s screening order. 

Instead, she raises a myriad of new allegations about PNC Bank’s conduct. Some of these 

attack the state foreclosure judgment. For example, she appears to believe that the 

judgment of foreclosure was wrong because she purchased the house not knowing that 

it contained “hidden defects” (presumably related to the pipes that burst), obligating 

PNC Bank, as her mortgagee, to pay to repair the damage instead of foreclosing. Other 

allegations concern events that may pre-date the state suit. She accuses PNC Bank of 

harassing her family with threatening letters and phone calls, interfering with her 

wireless internet and phone services, and orchestrating her son’s wrongful conviction 

for theft. According to Carpenter, such actions on the part of PNC Bank violate federal 

criminal, civil-rights, antitrust, and consumer-protection laws. 

 

 The district court was correct to dismiss Carpenter’s case for lack of jurisdiction. 

The first jurisdictional problem with the complaint is that, by relying only on the federal 

civil rights statutes, she needed to allege that PNC is a state actor (42 U.S.C. § 1983), or it 

conspired with others to deny her equal protection (id. § 1985), or it refused to stop such 

a conspiracy (id. § 1986). Because she has not, the complaint does not engage 

federal-question jurisdiction. See Carter v. Homeward Residential, Inc., 794 F.3d 806, 807 

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No. 15-2732 Page 3 

(7th Cir. 2015) (ruling that a civil rights suit against a private lender alleging wrongdoing 

in a state foreclosure proceeding did not engage federal-question jurisdiction). 

 Second, and apart from this problem, under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine a federal 

district court is powerless to remedy alleged mistakes in a state court judgment. 

See Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 283–84 (2005); District of 

Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 

263 U.S. 413 (1923). The doctrine prevents district courts from adjudicating the claim, 

which Carpenter appears to raise in her complaint, that because the judgment against 

her in the foreclosure suit was unfounded, the state court allowed PNC Bank to get away 

with “harassment.” See Harold v. Steel, 773 F.3d 884, 886–87 (7th Cir. 2014); Crawford v. 

Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 647 F.3d 642, 646–47 (7th Cir. 2011) (concluding that 

challenge to validity of state judgment of foreclosure was barred by Rooker-Feldman). We 

recognize that, because a judgment of foreclosure precedes a sale (which Carpenter 

would like to stop) of the foreclosed property and a deficiency judgment, Carpenter’s 

judgment may not yet be appealable under state law. See HSBC Bank USA, N.A. v. 

Townsend, 793 F.3d 771, 775–77 (7th Cir. 2015); Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. McCluskey, 

999 N.E.2d 321, 325 (Ill. 2013). But that distinction does not help Carpenter here because 

“[a] truly interlocutory decision should not be subject to review in any court; review is 

deferred until the decision is final.” Harold, 773 F.3d at 886 (emphasis in original). 

 The third problem is that, for events alleged for the first time on appeal that do 

not challenge the foreclosure judgment, Carpenter presents no grounds for reversal. A 

plaintiff may not raise on appeal entirely new claims for relief. Kathrein v. City of 

Evanston, Ill., 752 F.3d 680, 689 (7th Cir. 2014); Williams v. Dieball, 724 F.3d 957, 961 

(7th Cir. 2013). Because Carpenter’s new allegations on appeal do not merely elaborate 

on her complaint’s challenge to the state court judgment but advance a plethora of 

unrelated grievances, they cannot justify disturbing the judgment of dismissal. 

 We typically expect district courts to give pro se litigants one opportunity to 

amend after dismissing a complaint. See Tate v. SCR Med. Transp., No. 15-1447, 

2015 WL 9463188, at *2 (7th Cir. Dec. 28, 2015). But that’s unnecessary where, as 

here, “it is certain from the face of the complaint that any amendment would be futile or 

otherwise unwarranted.” Barry Aviation Inc. v. Land O'Lakes Mun. Airport Comm’n,

377 F.3d 682, 687 (7th Cir. 2004). Carpenter could not have cured her complaint’s flaw, 

which is that the federal district court lacked jurisdiction over a civil rights suit that 

attacks a state foreclosure judgment or a private party for seeking that judgment. 

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 Accordingly the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED, and the pending 

Motions to Stay the Judicial Sale are DENIED.

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