Opinion ID: 221459
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Dismissal of Claims Against Individual Defendants

Text: We turn next to the dismissal of the Crawfords' claims against the La Porte County Sheriff and their foreclosure attorney. [6] To survive the defendants' Rule 12(b)(6) motions, the Crawfords' second amended complaint must have stated sufficient facts to render their claims against the sheriff and the attorney complete and plausible. See Estate of Davis, 633 F.3d at 533. Our review is somewhat confounded by the Crawfords' complaint, which the district court accurately described as a legal morass because its claims lacked any explanation of what facts formed the bases for relief under the legal theories invoked. Crawford v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 2010 WL 597942, at  (N.D.Ind. Feb. 12, 2010). Nevertheless, we construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the Crawfords and review the district court's dismissal of the claims against Sheriff Mollenhauer and attorney Dilk de novo. Active Disposal, Inc. v. City of Darien, 635 F.3d 883, 886 (7th Cir.2011).
The district court granted Sheriff Mollenhauer's motion to dismiss for a variety of reasons. While the Crawfords, in opposition to the motion, suggested that the Sheriff's Department discriminated against them based on their disabilities, they never identified even one of the twenty-two claims to which that suggestion pertained. And though the Crawfords suggested that their pleading at a minimum stated a claim for excessive force in the eviction method, the complaint never referred to or alleged excessive force. Other claims that they argued implicated the Sheriff named only the lenders, consisted of a bald and unexplained assertion that all defendants violated the due course of law, or could not support the Sheriff's liability as a matter of law. In their brief to this court, the Crawfords do not address the district court's reasons for its judgment. Rather, in two scant sentences they contend that their allegations met the plausibility standard and that the Sheriff was on notice that he violated specified statutes (without specifying which statutes were supposedly violated). We find the district court's reasons to have been sound. None of the Crawfords' claims applies any facts to its cause of action to suggest how the Sheriff could conceivably, let alone plausibly, be liable. [7] See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1949, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009).
In response to Dilk's motion to dismiss, the Crawfords clarified which nine claims implicated their erstwhile attorney. The district court evaluated each claim in detail and correctly noted that it did not need to accept as true the Crawfords' conclusory allegations that constituted mere threadbare recitals of the elements of their myriad claims. See Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. at 1949. It discussed each claim in detail and ultimately concluded that [e]ach and every one of the nine claims the Crawfords now clarify they assert against Dilk is . . . nothing more than captious and meritless. Crawford, 2010 WL 597942, at . On appeal, the Crawfords again do not address the district court's reasoning on any individual claim. Rather, they argue that their complaint set forth a claim against their former attorney for breaching a contract of which they were the intended beneficiaries (though they do not identify the contract at issue). Dilk's abortive representation of them in the state foreclosure action, they allege, led to the default judgment of foreclosure and to the litany of harms that followed. They therefore argue that Dilk was on notice that his alleged failures contributed to the civil rights violations suffered by the Crawfords. (Appellants' Br. at 16.) Because these statements neither address nor undermine the district court's analysis, we see no indication of error in its granting Dilk's motion to dismiss. [8]