Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/189/180/526647/
Timestamp: 2019-06-27 10:03:07
Document Index: 434066455

Matched Legal Cases: ['§133', '§ 1257', '§ 1331', '§ 2401', '§2401', '§2401']

James H. Johnson, Individually and As Personal Representative of Distributees of the Estate of William H. Johnson, Deceased, Plaintiff-appellant,vthe Smithsonian Institution, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Inc., Defendants-appellees,, 189 F.3d 180 (2d Cir. 1999) :: Justia
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James H. Johnson, Individually and As Personal Representative of Distributees of the Estate of William H. Johnson, Deceased, Plaintiff-appellant,vthe Smithsonian Institution, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Inc., Defendants-appellees,, 189 F.3d 180 (2d Cir. 1999)
US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - 189 F.3d 180 (2d Cir. 1999)
Appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Motley, J.) dismissing the plaintiff's complaint in part under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and in part under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (7) and 19 for failure to join a necessary and indispensable party.
Affirmed as to the dismissal of the claims against the Smithsonian Institution, and reversed and remanded in part as to the dismissal of the claims against Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Inc. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
On July 16, 1997, the plaintiff initiated the instant lawsuit by filing a complaint against both the Smithsonian and the Rosenfeld Gallery. The Harmon Foundation was not made a party to the action. Each defendant moved to dismiss the complaint. The district court dismissed the claims relating to the 1956 artwork under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (1) on the grounds that they were barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, under which the court did not have jurisdiction to review the abandonment order issued by the New York State Supreme Court. Johnson, 9 F. Supp. 2d at 351. The court held that the claims against the Rosenfeld Gallery and the Smithsonian relating to the 1946 artwork also failed because the Harmon Foundation was a necessary and indispensable party to the litigation under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (7) and 19 but could not be joined because the statute of limitations had long since run on any claims against it. See id. at 353-54. The court also suggested that had it not dismissed the plaintiff's claims against the Smithsonian on that basis, it would have dismissed them on the alternative ground that the plaintiff failed to comply with the jurisdictional provisions of the Federal Tort Claims Act ("FTCA"). See id. at 353. The plaintiff appeals.2
The district court dismissed all of the plaintiff's claims regarding the 1956 artwork under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (1) on the grounds that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction. We review that portion of the district court's decision de novo. See Moccio v. New York State Office of Court Admin., 95 F.3d 195, 198 (2d Cir. 1996).
What is now known as the Rooker-Feldman doctrine was first announced in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923), and was re-affirmed in District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983). The principle holds that, among federal courts, only the Supreme Court has subject matter jurisdiction to review state court judgments. See Moccio, 95 F.3d at 197 (federal review of state court judgments "can occur only by way of a certiorari petition to the Supreme Court"); see also 18 James Wm. Moore et al., Moore's Federal Practice §133.30 [3] [a] (3d ed. 1999) (doctrine is premised on prudential grounds of preserving system consistency as well as on the statutory grounds that 28 U.S.C. § 1257 gives the United States Supreme Court exclusive federal jurisdiction to review state court judgments while 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1334 give federal district courts original but not appellate jurisdiction). The Rooker-Feldman doctrine also bars federal courts from considering claims that are "inextricably intertwined" with a prior state court determination. See Feldman, 460 U.S. at 482 n.16; Moccio, 95 F.3d at 199-200 (" [T]he Supreme Court's use of 'inextricably intertwined' means, at a minimum, that where a federal plaintiff had an opportunity to litigate a claim in a state proceeding..., subsequent litigation of the claim will be barred under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine if it would be barred under the principles of preclusion."); Garry v. Geils, 82 F.3d 1362, 1365 (7th Cir. 1996) (" [T]he fundamental and appropriate question to ask is whether the injury alleged by the federal plaintiff resulted from the state court judgment itself or is distinct from that judgment. If the injury alleged resulted from the state court judgment itself, Rooker-Feldman directs that the lower federal courts lack jurisdiction.").
The plaintiff does not dispute that both Johnson's Special Guardian and his mother received notice of the proposed abandonment of the artwork and that neither posed any objection. The interests of the plaintiff, both as the proclaimed representative of the distributees and as an alleged representative of the estate, were therefore represented at the state court proceedings. See In re New York Asbestos Litig., 738 F. Supp. 66, 68 (E.D.N.Y. 1990) (" [O]rdinarily a personal representative or distributee is in privity with the decedent where she has a successive relationship to the same right of property.") (citing In re Estate of Werger, 315 N.Y.S.2d 943, 946 (N.Y. Sur. 1970)), aff'd sub nom. Kreppin v. Celotex Corp., 969 F.2d 1424 (2d Cir. 1992). Because no objection was raised to the final accounting in which the Committee included its intention to abandon all of Johnson's artwork,4 a federal district court lacks jurisdiction to consider the plaintiff's objections almost forty-five years later. See Hachamovitch v. DeBuono, 159 F.3d 687, 693 (2d Cir. 1998) (jurisdiction lacking if its exercise "would result in the reversal or modification of a state court judgment").
The plaintiff contends that this case is not subject to the Rooker-Feldman bar because he claims that the 1956 order was fraudulently obtained. We disagree. This Court has never recognized a blanket fraud exception to Rooker-Feldman. The cases upon which the plaintiff relies to the contrary are unavailing. In Lawrence v. Cohn, 932 F. Supp. 564 (S.D.N.Y. 1996), for example, the court held that the plaintiff could sue the executor of an estate for fraud without violating the Rooker-Feldman doctrine because such a suit would not directly undermine the state court decision that finalized the distribution of the decedent's assets. See id. at 575. Here, the plaintiff seeks in effect to set aside the state court's order. That he cannot do in a federal district court. Cf. Levitin v. Homburger, 932 F. Supp. 508, 518-19 (S.D.N.Y. 1996) (plaintiff should seek remedy in state court, rather than federal court, to undo challenged judgment because " [i]t is settled law that a court has inherent power to vacate its own judgment on proof that fraud has been perpetrated on the court"), aff'd, 107 F.3d 3 (2d Cir. 1997) (unpublished table decision).
The plaintiff also tries to circumvent Rooker-Feldman by arguing that he is not contesting the 1956 order but is claiming that the Committee never abandoned the artwork after receiving the court order. As the plaintiff correctly notes, " [a]bandonment of property requires a confluence of intention and action by the owner", Hoelzer v. City of Stamford, Conn., 933 F.2d 1131, 1138 (2d Cir. 1991). There is, however, no allegation that either of those two elements was missing here.
The district court also dismissed all the plaintiff's claims concerning the 1946 artwork. The court reasoned that the Harmon Foundation was a necessary party with respect to those claims, but the statute of limitations having run against it, it could not be made a defendant. We hold to the contrary that the Harmon Foundation was not a necessary party with respect to the claims against either defendant. We conclude nonetheless that the claims against the Smithsonian should have been dismissed under Rule 12(b) (1) because the plaintiff failed to comply with the FTCA. The court therefore lacked subject matter jurisdiction.5 The claims against the Rosenfeld Gallery, however, which are of course not governed by the FTCA, were improperly dismissed. The claims against the gallery must be remanded for the district court to decide whether the court has diversity jurisdiction, whether the plaintiff has standing with respect to the claims against the gallery, and any additional issues that may be necessary for the court to decide in order to resolve this litigation.
The Smithsonian and the Rosenfeld Gallery contend that this litigation cannot proceed without the Harmon Foundation as a party. They argue that because no list or catalog that might help to differentiate between the 1946 artwork and the works of art affected by the 1956 state court order has been found, the court and the parties have no way to determine the provenance of the artwork or the events that occurred in 1946 without the help of the Harmon Foundation. The district court agreed. It dismissed the plaintiff's 1946 artwork claims under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (7) and 19 because the Harmon Foundation was thus a necessary party but the statute of limitations prevented it from being joined in the litigation.6
Before dismissing a complaint under Rule 12(b) (7), a district court must determine whether the missing party is necessary within the meaning of Fed. R. Civ. P. 19. We review for abuse of discretion the district court's decision that the Harmon Foundation is a necessary party. See Jota v. Texaco, Inc., 157 F.3d 153, 161 (2d Cir. 1998).
Costello Publ'g Co. v. Rotelle, 670 F.2d 1035, 1044 (D.C. Cir. 1981); see also Brown v. United States, 42 Fed. Cl. 538, 564 (Fed. Cl. 1998) (a party is not "necessary" for Rule 19 purposes merely because the plaintiff needs to obtain evidence from it and the defendant would have to defend the absent party's actions at trial); Hefley v. Textron, Inc., 713 F.2d 1487, 1498 (10th Cir. 1983) (rejecting notion "that without the broader discovery available from [the absent] party, complete relief can not be granted" and stating " [w]e have found no cases which approve of the use of rule 19 simply to allow greater discovery, and we can discern no policy which such an expansion of the rule would promote").
In order to state a claim under the FTCA, the person attempting to assert it must comply with several strictly construed prerequisites. The operative one here is that " [a] tort claim against the United States shall be forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues...." 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b). Unless a plaintiff complies with that requirement, a district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over a plaintiff's FTCA claim. See United States v. Kubrick, 444 U.S. 111, 117-18 (1979) (the statute of limitations contained in §2401(b) is strictly construed because the FTCA "waives the immunity of the United States"). The burden is on the plaintiff to plead and prove compliance with §2401(b). In re Agent Orange Prod. Liab. Litig., 818 F.2d 210, 214 (2d Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1004 (1988). The plaintiff did not do so here.
We conclude that the district court properly dismissed the plaintiff's 1956 artwork claims against both the Smithsonian and the Rosenfeld Gallery under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b) (1) on the ground that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction to consider matters inextricably intertwined with the 1956 order issued by the New York State Supreme Court. We therefore affirm that portion of the district court's decision.
The district court erred, however, when it dismissed the remainder of the complaint on the Rule 12(b) (7) ground that the Harmon Foundation was a necessary party to this action within the meaning of Rule 19. The parties have demonstrated only that the absence of the Foundation will create evidentiary difficulties. That is not a proper Rule 19 consideration. The 1946 artwork claims against the Smithsonian must be dismissed, however, on the ground that the plaintiff failed to comply with the FTCA's jurisdictional requirement that a formal administrative claim seeking a sum certain be filed within two years after the contested injury accrued. We therefore affirm the dismissal of the claims against the Smithsonian because the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider them.
The plaintiff also asks this Court to consider the district court's denial of his motions (1) for leave to amend the complaint and (2) for reconsideration of the order dismissing the action. We do not have jurisdiction to consider those issues because the plaintiff's notice of appeal specifically states that he is appealing only the district court's June 25, 1998 decision dismissing the complaint. See Fed. R. App. P. 3(c) (1) (B); see also Capital Parks, Inc. v. Southeastern Adver. & Sales Sys., Inc., 30 F.3d 627, 630 (5th Cir. 1994).