UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

________________ _________________ KAREN L. L’GGRKE, Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. ASSET PLUS CORPORATION, a Texas corporation; STAFF ONE, INC., an Oklahoma corporation; MICHAEL S. MCGRATH, Defendants – Appellees. No. 15-5059 (D.C. No. 4:12-CV -00596-JED-TLW) (N.D. Okla.)

________________ _________________ ORDER AND JUDGMENT *

________________ _________________ Before HARTZ , BALDOCK , and HOLMES , Circuit Judges.

________________ _________________ Plaintiff Karen L. L’Ggrke, appearing pr o se, appeals the dist rict court’s Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(b) dismissal of her employment discrimina tion complaint against Asset Plus Corporation, its Chief Executive Office r, Michael S. McGrath, and Staff One, Inc. for failure to prosecute. We ha ve jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.

* After examining the briefs and appellate record, th is panel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not ma terially 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 This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctr ines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cite d, however, for its persuasi ve value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

### January 20, 2016
Elisabeth A. Shumaker Clerk of Court2 Plaintiff filed a complaint in Oklahoma state court alleging discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e et seq ., (Title VII); the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621 et seq ., (ADEA); the Americans with Disabi lities Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101 et seq ., (ADA) and 42 U.S.C. § 1981. She alleged sh e had been terminated from her joint employment with Asset Plus, a property ma nagement company, and Staff One, an employment staffing company, based on her age, sex, inter-racial marriage, and disability. In April 2012, the defendants removed th e matter to federal court because Plaintiff’s claims were al l based on federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (federal question jurisdiction). An attorney entered an appearance on behalf of Plaintiff. The district court granted Mich ael McGrath’s motion to dism iss all claims. Several months later, Plaintiff’s atto rney withdrew, citing material differences with Plaintiff. Plaintiff retained new counsel but terminated that law firm a fe w months later. Plaintiff then filed a pro se notice of appeal with this c ourt stating she was challenging each and every item on the distri ct court’s docket sheet. Her appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. L’Ggrke v. McGrath , No. 14-5090 (10th Cir. Sept. 3, 2014) (unpublished order). The district court denied Plaintiff’s repeated motions to stay the proceedings wh ile she moved for rehearing en banc and petitioned the Supreme Court for a wr it of certiorari. In December 2014, after numerous unsuccessf ul attempts to depose Plaintiff, the defendants moved to compel Plaint iff’s appearance at a deposition. The3 magistrate judge ordered Plai ntiff to appear and show cause why she should not be sanctioned. Plaintiff did not appear at the show cause h earing, refused to cooperate in scheduling her deposition, and challenged the district court’s jurisdiction. The district court granted defenda nts’ motion for sanctions ag ainst Plaintiff and ordered her to appear at an in-court deposition. Pl aintiff failed to appear for that deposition, and the magistrate judge awarde d defendants their attorneys’ fees and costs. Plaintiff raised no objection to the reasonableness of that award. Inst ead, she continued to challenge the district court’s jurisdicti on over her complaint, claiming it lacked diversity jurisdiction. In May 2015, with trial scheduled in J une, the defendants moved to dismiss for lack of prosecution and as a sanction for Pl aintiff’s disregard of court orders. The district court denied Plaint iff’s jurisdictional objections and affirmed the magistrate judge’s award of fees and costs. It warned Plain tiff that it would di smiss her case if she continued to obstruct the progress of th e litigation on meritless grounds and fail to participate in discovery. Plaintiff then failed to app ear at the pretrial hearing conference, filed a motion to dismiss rea sserting the same juri sdictional arguments already rejected by the court, and filed another appeal w ith the Tenth Circuit, this time challenging the district court’s order awarding fees and costs. Her appeal was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. L’Ggrke v. Asset Plus Corp ., No. 15-5052 (10th Cir. June 23, 2015) (unpublished order). The district court then granted the defe ndants’ motion to dismiss for failure to prosecute under Rule 41(b). It found that Plaintiff’s failu re to appear for depositions4 and the pretrial conference and her refusal to litigate her complaint on the merits had prejudiced the defendants. It found she had interfered with the judicial process to an impermissible degree by twice refusing to appear for her depos ition and violating court orders. It found Plai ntiff was culpable for her fa ilure to prosecute; she had been warned that dismissal would be a li kely sanction for her continued failure to prosecute the merits of her complaint; and th at lesser sanctions we re almost certain to be ineffective, given that Plaintiff was unresponsive to the lesser sanctions already imposed. Plaintiff appeals.
II. Under Rule 41(b), a district court may dismiss an acti on “if the plaintiff fails to prosecute or to comply with these rules or a court order.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(b). We review a dismissal under Rule 41(b) fo r an abuse of discretion, asking whether the district court made “a clear error of judgment or exceed[ed] the bounds of permissible choice in the circumstances.” Ecclesiastes 9:10–11–12, Inc. v. LMC Holding Co. , 497 F.3d 1135, 1143 (10th Cir. 2007) (citations, internal quotation marks, and brackets omitted). Because Pl aintiff proceeds pro se, we liberally construe her brief, but pro se parties mu st follow the same procedural rules that govern other litigants and we do not assume an advocacy role for pro se litigants. Garrett v. Selby Connor Maddux & Janer , 425 F.3d 836, 840 (10th Cir. 2005). Plaintiff only asserts one argument rele vant to the Rule 41(b) dismissal, asserting she had a good-faith basis for not appearing in federal court or for her5 deposition based on her contention that th e district court lacked jurisdiction. 1 This argument is without merit. Plaintiff was not free to decide on her own that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order her to appear at its hearings or for depositi ons. It is a basic proposition that all orders and judgments of courts must be obeyed “however erroneous the action of the court may be,” until the order “is reversed for error by orderly review, either by itself or by a highe r court” and that “disobedience of them is contempt of [the court’s] lawf ul authority, to be punished.” Howat v. Kansas , 258 U.S. 181, 189–90 (1922). “If a person to whom a court dire cts an order believes that order is incorrect the reme dy is to appeal, but, absent a stay, he must comply promptly with the orde r pending appeal.” Maness v. Meyers , 419 U.S. 449, 458 (1975). “Persons who make private determin ations of the law an d refuse to obey an order generally risk . . . cont empt even if the order is u ltimately ruled incorrect.” Id

. The district court indisputably had fe deral question jurisd iction under § 1331 over Plaintiff’s claim. He r state court complaint cl aimed defendants’ conduct “constitutes a violation of Title VII, Sec tion 1981, the ADEA and the ADA.” Aplt. App., Vol. I, at 27. All of these are federal la ws. A suit arises u nder federal law and

1 Her 57-page brief is focused almo st entirely on her arguments that the district court lacked jurisdiction and, t hus, that the matter s hould be remanded to state court. Her issues on appeal are: (1) whether the meri ts are controlled by Oklahoma’s Supreme Court decisions relati ng to franchise and revenue taxes; (2) whether the defendants timely removed th eir suit; (3) whether federal question jurisdiction can be invoked by a corporati on whose corporate status in Oklahoma had previously been revoked; and (4) whether th e district court’s failure to rule on the merits of her claims precluded entry of a final order. Aplt. Opening Br. at 25, 30, 41, 49.6 is properly removed to federa l court under § 1331 “when th e plaintiff’s statement of [her] own cause of action shows th at it is based on federal law.” Schmeling v. NORDAM , 97 F.3d 1336, 1339 (10th Ci r. 1996) (noting that “the plaintiff is the ‘master of the claim’ and may prevent removal by choosing not to plead a federal claim even if one is availabl e”). But to be clear, ev en assuming purely for the sake of argument that the district court had lacked jurisdiction, it still had jurisdiction to sanction Plaintiff for failure to comply with its orders. See United States v. United Mine Workers , 330 U.S. 258, 292-93 (1947) (upholding a criminal contempt order for failing to comply with a court order, t hough it was later determined that the court lacked jurisdiction over the merits at the time it issued the order); see also Willy v. Coastal Corp ., 503 U.S. 131, 136–37 (1992) (holding that district court may impose sanctions for conduct that occurred during a proceeding in which the court ultimately lacked subject matter jurisdiction). We find no abuse of the district court’s discreti on under Rule 41(b). It properly considered the propriety of sancti ons in light of the appropriate factors, see Ehrenhaus v. Reynolds , 965 F.2d 916, 921 (10th Cir. 1992), and determined that dismissal with prejudice was wa rranted. Given the procedur al history of this case, we cannot disagree with the court’s decisi on. We decline to consider any other arguments raised by Plainti ff regarding any of the dist rict court’s interlocutory orders. See AdvantEdge Bus. Grp. v. Thomas E. Mestmaker & Assocs. , 552 F.3d 1233, 1237 (10th Cir. 2009) (declining to review interl ocutory order where plaintiff’s7 failure to proceed with the judicial proc ess resulted in dismissal for failure to prosecute). Accordingly, we affirm the district c ourt’s judgment for substantially the same reasons stated in the court’s order dated June 24, 2015.

Entered for the Court

Jerome A. Holmes Circuit Judge