Court Opinion

ID: 9488633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:50:57.93278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:00.074388
License: Public Domain

FAIRCHILD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent from the court’s decision to modify the judgment from one declining jurisdiction to dismissal on the merits, based on claim preclusion. I would affirm the district court’s judgment without modification, dismissing for lack of jurisdiction.
My analysis differs from that of my colleagues in two ways.
First, it seems clear to me that plaintiff Nesses is attempting to obtain review of the state court judgments against him. His complaint is far from a model, but if there is anything which suggests jurisdiction, it is his attempt at a Section 1983 claim. The gist of it is: defendant lawyers and one or more state judges joined in a scheme and conspiracy, and misuse of political power and influence. They caused the entry of judgments against plaintiff contrary to merit and law. The judgments deprived plaintiff of property without due process of law, as well as abridging his privileges and immunities and denying him equal protection of the laws. His complaint could have no meaning unless it sought a determination that the state court judgments were wrong. It follows that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine requires dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.
Second, I am unable to agree with a distinction in this context between one who was a losing plaintiff in state court and one who was a losing defendant. This distinction leads to a rule that a district court should take jurisdiction and give a merits judgment applying res judicata where a losing plaintiff seeks review, but should dismiss for lack of jurisdiction where a losing defendant does so. There can be collateral attack on a judgment against a plaintiff as well as against a defendant. There can be res judicata in either case. The distinction has even less to commend it when one notes that in Rooker, the plaintiffs seeking federal district court review had been losing plaintiffs before the state court, and in Feldman, those seeking review had been unsuccessful applicants to a District of Columbia court for a waiver, and thus had been in the stance of losing plaintiffs. Yet the Supreme Court announced the Rooker-Feldman doctrine of no jurisdiction in those cases.