UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

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EDWARD L. MULCAHY, JR., 

 Plaintiff - Appellant,

v.

ASPEN/PITKIN COUNTY HOUSING 

AUTHORITY, a multi-jurisdictional 

housing authority, 

 Defendant - Appellee.

No. 19-1387

(D.C. No. 1:18-CV-01918-PAB-GPG)

(D. Colo.)

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ORDER AND JUDGMENT*

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Before HARTZ, McHUGH, and EID, Circuit Judges.

_________________________________

Edward Mulcahy, Jr., sued Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority (APCHA)

under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging due-process and equal-protection violations. The 

district court dismissed his claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under the 

Rooker-Feldman doctrine.1

 In this appeal, Mr. Mulcahy abandons his claims for 

* After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined 

unanimously that oral argument would not materially assist in the determination of 

this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore 

ordered submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding 

precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral 

estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with 

Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. 1 The Rooker-Feldman doctrine takes its name from Rooker v. Fidelity Trust

Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923), and District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 

460 U.S. 462 (1983). 

FILED

United States Court of Appeals

Tenth Circuit

October 21, 2020

Christopher M. Wolpert

Clerk of Court
2

relief except those seeking monetary damages. We affirm the judgment as to the 

abandoned claims. As to the claims for damages, however, we reverse. 

I. Background2

APCHA administers an affordable-housing program in Pitkin County, 

Colorado, where housing has become too expensive for the local workforce. 

Through the housing program, APCHA conveys properties to residents (chosen by 

lottery) at below-market prices. Mr. Mulcahy bought property through the APCHA 

lottery program, accepting deed restrictions on his employment and residency.

After owning the property for several years, Mr. Mulcahy received a letter 

from APCHA alleging that he was not complying with the deed restriction. The 

letter gave him fourteen days to respond and sixty days to resolve the compliance 

issues. Although Mr. Mulcahy promptly communicated with APCHA’s 

qualifications specialist, fourteen days after the date of the first compliance letter, 

APCHA sent a second compliance letter. And fourteen days after sending the second 

letter, APCHA sent an official notice of violation, finding that Mr. Mulcahy had 

breached the deed restriction and informing him that he had fifteen days to contest 

the finding. But Mr. Mulcahy was traveling, so he did not know about the notice of 

violation and did not respond within the fifteen-day period. APCHA then sent him a 

final letter demanding that he list the property for sale.

2 We recite the events leading to litigation as Mr. Mulcahy alleges them in his 

amended complaint. 
3

APCHA brought a suit in state court seeking an order forcing Mr. Mulcahy to 

sell the property. The state court granted summary judgment to APCHA after 

concluding that Mr. Mulcahy failed to exhaust his administrative remedies by not 

contesting the notice of violation. The Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed the

judgment, and the Colorado Supreme Court denied certiorari review.

3

Mr. Mulcahy then filed this lawsuit in federal court. His due-process claim 

complains that “APCHA failed to follow its own regulations and guidelines” when it 

prematurely issued a notice of violation. Aplt. App. at 198. And his equal-protection 

claim complains that APCHA refused him a hearing to contest the notice of violation 

even though it “has repeatedly granted other individuals” hearings after 

administrative response deadlines had passed. Id. at 200. His complaint requests

relief including an order declaring invalid APCHA’s notice of violation, an 

injunction requiring APCHA to issue a notice of violation that allows him to request 

a hearing to contest its findings, and several forms of damages. The district court 

dismissed Mr. Mulcahy’s claims under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.

3 APCHA moves to supplement the record with documents from the state-court 

litigation. We grant the motion, exercising our discretion to take judicial notice of 

public records from “our court and certain other courts concerning matters that bear 

directly upon the disposition of the case at hand.” United States v. Ahidley, 486 F.3d 

1184, 1192 n.5 (10th Cir. 2007). 
4

II. Discussion

Mr. Mulcahy pursues only his claims for damages on appeal, arguing that the 

district court erroneously dismissed those claims under Rooker-Feldman.

4

 “We 

review that dismissal de novo.” Campbell v. City of Spencer, 682 F.3d 1278, 1281 

(10th Cir. 2012).

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine recognizes that only the Supreme Court “is 

vested, under 28 U.S.C. § 1257, with jurisdiction over appeals from final state-court 

judgments.” Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 463 (2006). And so “lower federal 

courts are precluded from exercising appellate jurisdiction over final state-court 

judgments.” Id. 

But “Rooker-Feldman is not simply preclusion by another name.” Id. at 466. 

It applies only in “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.” Exxon Mobil 

Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005). “If a federal plaintiff 

presents some independent claim, albeit one that denies a legal conclusion that a state 

court has reached in a case to which he was a party, then there is jurisdiction and 

state law determines whether the defendant prevails under principles of preclusion.” 

Id. at 293 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). In other words, the 

4 Mr. Mulcahy concedes that his request for an order declaring the notice of 

violation invalid “does appear to conflict with the Rooker-Feldman doctrine,” Aplt. 

Opening Br. at 25, and that he has “abandoned” his request for injunctive relief, Aplt. 

Reply Br. at 10. But he maintains that his requests for monetary damages survive.
5

doctrine does not prohibit a federal action “just because it could result in a judgment 

inconsistent with a state-court judgment.” Mayotte v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n, 

880 F.3d 1169, 1174 (10th Cir. 2018). The federal actions it prohibits are those 

seeking “to modify or set aside a state-court judgment because the state proceedings 

should not have led to that judgment.” Id.

Mr. Mulcahy’s claims do not complain of injuries caused by the state-court

judgment. Indeed, the alleged constitutional violations underlying his claims—

APCHA’s issuing a notice of violation and refusing to grant a hearing to allow him to 

contest it—occurred before the state-court suit began. The constitutional violations 

that he alleges are APCHA’s acts “that led to the judgment,” not “the content of the 

judgment.” Campbell, 682 F.3d at 1285.

Still, APCHA protests, without the state-court judgment, Mr. Mulcahy “would 

have no reason to assert claims for damages against APCHA.” Aplee. Br. at 15. This 

point raises a fair question: Does Mr. Mulcahy in fact complain of injury from the 

state-court judgment while purporting to complain only of APCHA’s conduct? We 

do not think so. A “federal suit complains of injury from a state-court judgment, 

even if it appears to complain only of a third party’s actions, when the third party’s 

actions are produced by a state-court judgment and not simply ratified, acquiesced in, 

or left unpunished by it.” Hoblock v. Albany Cty. Bd. of Elections, 422 F.3d 77, 88 

(2d Cir. 2005). The state-court judgment did not produce the actions that 

Mr. Mulcahy challenges in his complaint, actions that occurred before the state-court 

suit even began.
6

That Mr. Mulcahy complains about conduct predating the state-court suit

distinguishes this case from Mann v. Boatright, 477 F.3d 1140 (10th Cir. 2007). In 

Mann we concluded that Rooker-Feldman barred the plaintiff’s claims for “monetary 

damages against a variety of government actors and private individuals for the 

alleged violations of her constitutional rights occasioned by their complicity with the 

probate court’s orders.” Id. at 1147. Mr. Mulcahy, in contrast to the plaintiff in 

Mann, seeks damages based on alleged constitutional violations that predated any 

relevant state-court order, not based on violations that occurred through complicity 

with a state-court order.

Williams v. HSBC Bank USA, N.A., 681 F. App’x 693 (10th Cir. 2017)

(unpublished), on which APCHA relies, does not persuade us that Rooker-Feldman

bars Mr. Mulcahy’s claims for damages. The plaintiffs in Williams sought, in 

addition to other relief, “compensation for their home,” which had been sold at an 

auction following a state-court foreclosure judgment. Id. at 696 (internal quotation 

marks and brackets omitted). We concluded that Rooker-Feldman barred the 

plaintiffs’ damages claims because “their compensation request rest[ed] on the 

premise that the foreclosure judgment [was] infirm.” Id. Mr. Mulcahy does not 

argue in this case that the state-court judgment is infirm, “that a defect in the state 

proceedings invalidate[s] the state judgment,” Mayotte, 880 F.3d at 1175. 

Just as Mr. Mulcahy does not argue that the state judgment is infirm, neither 

does he seek to set it aside. Because his “claims are based on events predating” the 

state-court suit, he “could certainly obtain damages from [APCHA] without setting 
7

aside” the state-court judgment. Id. at 1175–76. Rooker-Feldman, then, does not bar 

his claims for damages. See id.

APCHA alternatively contends, as it did in the district court, that 

Mr. Mulcahy’s claims are barred by claim preclusion. The district court did not rule 

on APCHA’s claim-preclusion defense. Although we have discretion to affirm on 

any ground that the record supports, Elkins v. Comfort, 392 F.3d 1159, 1162 

(10th Cir. 2004), we “adopt the better practice of leaving the matter to the district 

court in the first instance” on remand, Evers v. Regents of Univ. of Colo., 509 F.3d 

1304, 1310 (10th Cir. 2007).

III. Conclusion

We affirm the district court’s dismissal of the claims for relief that 

Mr. Mulcahy has abandoned—all claims except those seeking damages. We reverse 

the district court’s dismissal of the claims for damages. And we remand the case for 

further proceedings.

Entered for the Court

Allison H. Eid

Circuit Judge