United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted September 22, 2014*

Decided September 23, 2014

Before

RICHARD D. CUDAHY, Circuit Judge

RICHARD A. POSNER, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

Nos. 13‐2427 & 13‐2535

YOLANDA D. YOUNG‐SMITH,

Plaintiff‐Appellant, Cross‐Appellee,

v.

REBECCA A. HOLT, et al.,

Defendants‐Appellees,

and

STEPHEN A. YOKICH,

Defendant‐Appellee, Cross‐Appellant.

Appeals from the United States District

Court for Northern District of Indiana,

South Bend Division.

No. 3:12‐cv‐00275

Philip P. Simon,

Chief Judge.

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

*

After examining the parties’ briefs and the record, we have concluded that oral

argument is unnecessary. See FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).
Nos. 13‐2427 & 13‐2535 Page 2

O R D E R

Yolanda Young‐Smith appeals the dismissal without prejudice of her civil‐rights

lawsuit. Stephen Yokich cross‐appeals to obtain a dismissal with prejudice. This case

arises out of another suit that Young‐Smith brought against her former employer (Bayer

Healthcare) and her union for employment discrimination. She alleges that attorneys in

the employment suit and others conspired to violate various laws in order to defeat her

in that case. The court dismissed Young‐Smith’s complaint for lack of a substantial

federal question. We affirm the dismissal because Young‐Smith failed to raise a

substantial federal question, but clarify that part of the dismissal is with prejudice.

According to Young‐Smith, whose factual allegations we must take as true, Bayer

fired her from her job as an hourly worker because she is black and her union failed to

grieve the discharge adequately. Young‐Smith sued both Bayer and the union for race

discrimination. She later settled with Bayer, and the district court granted the union

partial summary judgment, but allowed one claim against the union to proceed to trial;

the case is still pending.

Young‐Smith then filed this lawsuit to challenge conduct that occurred in the

employment suit. Her complaint accuses private actors—her attorney, the union’s

attorney, former co‐workers, and others—of lying to the court, defaming her during

court proceedings, and refusing to produce some documents.  Among other laws, she

cites 42 U.S.C. § 1985, the federal statute prohibiting conspiracies to violate civil rights,

and notes that she is black and the defendants are white.

After she filed this lawsuit, Young‐Smith asked the judge in the employment

case, Judge Lee, to consider her claims of fraud on his court. He allowed her to submit

her evidence of a fraud conspiracy, and after she supplied her evidence she asked him

to rescind her settlement agreement with Bayer and vacate the court’s grant of partial

summary judgment to the union. After considering the evidence, Judge Lee concluded

that no fraud occurred and denied Young‐Smith’s motions.

Meanwhile the defendants in this case moved to dismiss it. They argued that no

substantial federal claims supported subject‐matter jurisdiction. Defendant Stephen

Yokich, the union’s lawyer, added that Young‐Smith failed to state a claim for fraud

because her exclusive remedy for fraud was in the employment suit and her defamation

claim failed because an absolute litigation privilege shields statements he made there.

(Yokich did not argue that, in light of Judge Lee’s ruling, claim preclusion bars the
Nos. 13‐2427 & 13‐2535 Page 3

fraud claim; likewise on appeal Yokich tells us that, because the employment case is still

pending, Young‐Smith remains free to continue litigating her fraud claim there.)

The district court granted the motion to dismiss. It described Young‐Smith’s

complaint as a long, “machine gun spray of allegations” of state‐law violations,

peppered with haphazard citations to federal statutes. Without any facts supporting a

federal question, though, the court concluded that Young‐Smith’s complaint lacked

subject‐matter jurisdiction. It then dismissed all claims without prejudice. Both

Young‐Smith and Yokich moved the court to reconsider. Young‐Smith maintained that

the fraud conspiracy created a federal question, and Yokich argued that the dismissal

should be with prejudice because, although Judge Lee found no fraud, he treated the

question as substantial. Still seeing no federal question, the court denied both motions,

and the parties appeal.

Young‐Smith raises three main arguments on appeal. She first contends that her

case presents a federal question because she accuses private actors of conspiring to

interfere with her right to sue, misconduct for which she contends that 42 U.S.C. § 1985

provides a remedy. But to invoke federal jurisdiction under § 1985 non‐frivolously,

Young‐Smith needed to allege that the defendants conspired to deprive her of

constitutional rights because of her race. See 42 U.S.C. § 1985(2), (3); Griffin v. Breckenridge,

403 U.S. 88, 102–03 (1971); Chavis v. Clayton County School District, 300 F.3d 1288,

1291–92 (11th Cir. 2002). Although her complaint is littered with references to a

“conspiracy,” that legal term gets her nowhere. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 681

(2009); Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555–56 (2007). She never alleges that,

because of her race, the defendants conspired to defraud Judge Lee into rejecting her

employment suit. Without an allegation of racial animus, Young‐Smith’s reference to

§ 1985 did not create a substantial federal question. (We have considered the other

federal statutes she cites, but in the district court and here she did not develop serious

arguments about them, so they are forfeited.)

The remainder of Young‐Smith’s complaint creates no federal question either.

She raises claims of perjury, conspiracy to commit perjury, fraud, legal malpractice,

intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation. But these are all questions

of state law. See, e.g., Ball v. City of Indianapolis, ___ F.3d ___, 2014 WL 3673466 at *6 (7th

Cir. July 25, 2014) (perjury and fraud); Rosenbaum v. White, 692 F.3d 593, 600 (7th Cir.

2012) (legal malpractice); Parish v. City of Elkhart, 614 F.3d 677, 679 (7th Cir. 2010)

(intentional infliction of emotional distress); Baravati v. Josephthal, Lyon & Ross, Inc., 28
Nos. 13‐2427 & 13‐2535 Page 4

F.3d 704, 707 (7th Cir. 1994) (defamation). Because Young‐Smith does not assert

diversity jurisdiction, these claims do not support federal question jurisdiction.

Young‐Smith’s two remaining arguments are also baseless. First she contends

that in dismissing her complaint the district court improperly considered a matter

outside the pleadings—Judge Lee’s order rejecting the fraud claim. But a court may take

judicial notice of matters of public record such as a court order. See Gienosky v. City of

Chicago, 675 F.3d 743, 745 n.1 (7th Cir. 2012); United States v. Wood, 925 F.2d 1580,

1581–82 (7th Cir. 1991); Funk v. Stryker Corp., 631 F.3d 777, 783 (5th Cir. 2011). Second

Young‐Smith argues that the district court should have stayed this suit until final

judgment is entered in her employment case; that way, if the adverse fraud ruling there

becomes conclusive, she may later resume her fraud claims here. But once the court

enters a final judgment in the employment case, claim preclusion would bar her fraud

claims here. See Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880, 892 (2008). A stay thus would have been

pointless.

We come to Yokich’s cross‐appeal, in which he presents two arguments. He first

contends that Young‐Smith’s claim of a conspiracy to defraud Judge Lee should have

been dismissed with prejudice because her exclusive remedy for that claim is in the

employment case. He is correct that the dismissal should be with prejudice, but we need

not decide whether Young‐Smith’s only recourse for fraud was before the allegedly

defrauded court. A claim that presents no substantial federal question necessarily states

no federal claim; it therefore, “can justifiably be dismissed with prejudice to avoid

burdening the court system with a future suit that should not be brought—anywhere.”

Georgakis v. Illinois State University, 722 F.3d 1075, 1078 (7th Cir. 2013); see El v.

AmeriCredit Financial Services, Inc., 710 F.3d 748, 751 (7th Cir. 2013). Because her

conspiracy‐to‐defraud claim did not raise a substantial federal question, the district

judge should have dismissed it with prejudice for failure to state a federal claim.

Yokich next argues that the district court should have dismissed with prejudice

the supplemental state‐law defamation claim against him, but we disagree. If a

substantial federal claim is dismissed before trial, the court retains supplemental

jurisdiction to dismiss a frivolous state‐law claim. See Sellars v. City of Gary, 453 F.3d 848,

852 (7th Cir. 2006). But a frivolous federal claim, like Young‐Smith’s conspiracy claim, is

too insubstantial to confer federal jurisdiction, so it cannot support supplemental

jurisdiction to decide a state‐law claim. See, e.g., Arena v. Graybar Electric Company, Inc.,

669 F.3d 214, 221–22 (5th Cir. 2012); Musson Theatrical, Inc., v. Federal Express Corporation,

89 F.3d 1244, 1255 (6th Cir. 1996); Plott v. Griffiths, 938 F.2d 164 (10th Cir. 1991). Yokich
Nos. 13‐2427 & 13‐2535 Page 5

replies that Young‐Smith’s fraud claims were substantial because Judge Lee addressed

them. True, they may have been substantial in the sense that they fell within Judge

Lee’s inherent power to police his own court. But as Yokich concedes, fraud‐on‐the‐

court claims do not independently supply another federal court with federal‐question

jurisdiction if a federal law has not been violated, and Yokich does not identify one.

Without any substantial federal question in the district court, the defamation claims

were properly dismissed without prejudice.

Accordingly, the district court’s judgment is AFFIRMED AS MODIFIED to

reflect that the fraud claim against Yokich is dismissed with prejudice for failure to state

a federal claim.