IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO 

WESTERN DIVISION AT DAYTON 

JENNIFER TRAUFLER, : Case No. 3:17-cv-379 

 : 

 Plaintiff, : Judge Thomas M. Rose 

 : 

v. : 

 : 

HONORABLE TIMOTHY O’CONNELL, : 

Judge of the Montgomery County : 

Common Pleas Court, : 

 : 

 Defendant. : 

______________________________________________________________________________ 

ENTRY AND ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO DISMISS (DOC. 6) AND 

TERMINATING CASE 

______________________________________________________________________________ 

This case is before the Court on the Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 6) pursuant to Fed. 

R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6) filed by Defendant Timothy O’Connell, a judge on the 

Montgomery County, Ohio Common Pleas Court (“Judge O’Connell”). The Motion to 

Dismiss is fully briefed and ripe for review. (Docs. 6-8.) As discussed below, the Court 

GRANTS the Motion to Dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the RookerFeldman doctrine. 

I. BACKGROUND 

Plaintiff Jennifer Traufler (“Traufler”) brought this case to challenge a discovery 

order entered by Judge O’Connell in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, Case 

No. 2015-cv-3793 (the “State Court Case”). In that case, the Estate of Carolyn Harris 

(“the Estate”) alleges that the Kettering Health Network and other defendants provided 
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substandard medical care that caused the wrongful death of Ms. Harris. (Doc. 1 at ¶ 4.) 

Traufler was substituted as Administrator of the Estate after the person originally 

serving as the Administrator died. 

During discovery, the Estate requested that Kettering Health Network produce 

certain electronic medical records regarding Ms. Harris and her medical care. Kettering 

Health Network filed a motion for protective order so that it would not have to provide 

“live access” to those records. After briefing and an oral hearing, Judge O’Connell 

issued the requested protective order, which relieved Kettering Health Network from 

having to provide the aforementioned “live access.” 

In this Court, Traufler seeks a declaration that Judge O’Connell’s order violated 

the Estate’s right to electronically maintained Protected Health Information, as defined 

by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), and 

breached the Estate’s constitutional guarantees of equal protection and procedural and 

substantive due process. (Doc. 1 at ¶ 8-13.) 

Judge O’Connell moves to dismiss Traufler’s Complaint on three grounds: (1) the 

Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction to review the actions and decisions of a state 

court, (2) Judge O’Connell, as a judge of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, 

is entitled to judicial immunity when acting in his official capacity as a Common Pleas 

Judge, and (3) there is no cause of action for a HIPAA violation. As the Court does not 

have subject matter jurisdiction over this action, it does not address Judge O’Connell’s 

latter two grounds for dismissal of the Complaint. 
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II. ANALYSIS 

“The Rooker-Feldman doctrine ... stands for the proposition that a party aggrieved 

by a state-court decision, cannot appeal that decision to a district court, but must 

instead petition for a writ of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court. DLX, Inc. 

v. Kentucky, 381 F.3d 511, 516 (6th Cir.2004) (citations omitted). The Rooker-Feldman

doctrine bars two categories of cases: 

First, when the federal courts are asked to ‘engage in appellate review of 

state court proceedings,’ the doctrine necessarily applies ... In determining 

whether a plaintiff asks for appellate review, [the lower federal courts] 

look to the relief sought ... or asks the question whether the plaintiff 

alleges ‘that the state court’s judgment actively caused him injury [rather 

than] merely failing to address a preexisting injury.... 

The second category of cases barred by Rooker-Feldman are those which 

allege an injury that predates a state-court determination, but present 

issues inextricably intertwined with the claim asserted in the prior state 

court proceeding.... ‘The federal claim is inextricably intertwined with the 

state-court judgment when the federal claim succeeds only to the extent 

that the state court wrongly decided the issues before it....’ 

DLX, Inc., 381 F.3d 516 (citations omitted). Traufler’s claims here fall into the first 

category of cases barred from review under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. She contends 

that Judge O’Connell reached the wrong decision in his ruling on the motion for 

protective order and the harm she alleges is the direct result of that ruling. Thus, she is 

essentially asking this Court conduct an appellate review of Judge O’Connell’s ruling, 

which this Court does not have jurisdiction to do under Rooker-Feldman. 

In opposition, Traufler argues that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine applies only to 

final appealable orders from a state court, not interlocutory orders such as the discovery 

order issued by Judge O’Connell. She further argues that the equities weigh in favor of 
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the Court exercising its jurisdiction to consider her claims for declaratory relief. The 

cases cited by Traufler, however, do not support a conclusion that the Court has 

jurisdiction over this case, despite the bar imposed by Rooker-Feldman. (Doc. 7 at 4-6 

(citing Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 463 (2006) and Exxon Mobile Corp. v. Saudi Basic 

Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 292-93 (2005)).) 

In Lance, the Supreme Court held that “[t]he Rooker–Feldman doctrine does not 

bar actions by nonparties to the earlier state-court judgment simply because, for 

purposes of preclusion law, they could be considered in privity with a party to the 

judgment.” 546 U.S. at 466. Here, Traufler is the plaintiff in both the State Court Case 

and this case; the holding in Lance is inapposite. 

In Exxon Mobile, the Supreme Court held: 

The Rooker–Feldman doctrine, we hold today, is confined to cases of the 

kind from which the doctrine acquired its name: cases brought by statecourt 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. Rooker–Feldman

does not otherwise override or supplant preclusion doctrine or augment 

the circumscribed doctrines that allow federal courts to stay or dismiss 

proceedings in deference to state-court actions. 

Exxon Mobile, 544 U.S. at 284. Exxon Mobile’s federal action, which litigated the same 

matter already pending in state court, was not barred under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine 

because it “brought suit to protect itself in the event it lost in state court on grounds 

(such as the state statute of limitations) that might not preclude relief in the federal 

venue.” Id. at 293-94. In other words, Exxon Mobile brought a parallel federal action to 

obtain relief that might not be available in state court, not to overturn the state court’s 
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decision. The Supreme Court’s decision does not stand for the proposition that 

interlocutory orders from state courts are outside the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. 

This case falls within the confines of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, even as 

narrowly defined in Exxon-Mobile. It is a case “brought by [a] state-court loser[] 

complaining of injuries caused by [a] state-court judgment[] rendered before the district 

court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of [that] 

judgment[].” Id. at 284. For this reason, the Court does not have jurisdiction over this 

case and it must be dismissed. 

III. CONCLUSION 

 For the reasons above, the Court GRANTS Judge O’Connell’s Motion to Dismiss 

(Doc. 6) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. This 

case shall be TERMINATED on the Court’s docket. 

DONE and ORDERED in Dayton, Ohio, this Friday, February 2, 2018. 

 s/Thomas M. Rose 

 ________________________________ 

 THOMAS M. ROSE 

 UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE