Court Opinion

ID: 9907298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-12-06 01:00:31.997209+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:58:21.937240
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-11064        Document: 00516990218             Page: 1      Date Filed: 12/05/2023

             United States Court of Appeals
                  for the Fifth Circuit                                          United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                          Fifth Circuit

                                     ____________                                       FILED
                                                                                 December 5, 2023
                                       No. 22-11064                                  Lyle W. Cayce
                                     ____________                                         Clerk

   Harriet Nicholson,

                                                                    Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                            versus

   Bank of America; Countrywide Home Loans,
   Incorporated,

                                              Defendants—Appellees.
                     ______________________________

                     Appeal from the United States District Court
                         for the Northern District of Texas
                               USDC No. 3:21-CV-1779
                     ______________________________

   Before Davis, Southwick, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam: *
         Under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal district courts “cannot sit
   as appellate courts in review of state court judgments.” Weekly v. Morrow,
   204 F.3d 613, 615 (5th Cir. 2000).
         Plaintiff Harriet Nicholson sued Defendants Bank of America and
   Countrywide Home Loans in federal district court after exhausting her

         _____________________
         *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5.
Case: 22-11064      Document: 00516990218            Page: 2   Date Filed: 12/05/2023

                                      No. 22-11064

   remedies in Texas state court. Because we find the state court’s judgment to
   have been final and not void, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine precludes the fed-
   eral district court from hearing this case because of lack of subject matter ju-
   risdiction. Thus, we affirm the district court’s decision to dismiss Plaintiff’s
   case.
                                           I.
           In the underlying state court proceedings, Plaintiff Harriet Nicholson
   brought claims against several Defendants, including Bank of America and
   Countrywide Home Loans, related to the foreclosure sale of her home. The
   state trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants. It also
   granted Bank of America and Countrywide’s motion to sever Nicholson’s
   claims against them. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals sided with the state
   trial court and affirmed the orders, and the Supreme Court of Texas denied
   Nicholson’s petition for review.
           Nicholson then sought relief in federal court.        In the operative
   amended complaint, Nicholson argued that the state appellate court’s judg-
   ment was void because the court lacked jurisdiction. Bank of America and
   Countrywide moved to dismiss the amended complaint, arguing that it was
   an impermissible collateral attack on a state court order under the Rooker-
   Feldman doctrine. The magistrate judge agreed and recommended that the
   complaint be dismissed. The federal district court overruled Nicholson’s ob-
   jections, accepted the magistrate judge’s findings, and dismissed Nichol-
   son’s complaint.
                                          II.

           This case primarily concerns whether the federal district court has ju-
   risdiction over a case that has already been adjudicated in state court. This
   question rests on whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine applies.

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                                     No. 22-11064

          The Rooker-Feldman doctrine bars federal district courts from review-
   ing final judicial determinations of state courts. See Liedtke v. State Bar of
   Tex., 18 F.3d 315, 317 (5th Cir. 1994) (citing Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263
   U.S. 413 (1923); Dist. of Columbia Ct. of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462
   (1983)). This doctrine applies to “cases brought by state-court losers com-
   plaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the dis-
   trict court proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and re-
   jection of those judgments.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp.,
   544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005); see Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 464 (2006) (de-
   scribing Rooker-Feldman as a “narrow doctrine”).
          Nicholson argues that Rooker-Feldman does not apply to this case for
   two reasons.
          First, Nicholson maintains that the state appellate court’s judgment
   is void for lack of jurisdiction because the state trial court’s orders were in-
   terlocutory, not final. See Union Planters Bank Nat’l Ass’n v. Salih, 369 F.3d
   457, 461 (5th Cir. 2004) (“[T]he question we ask is not whether the order at
   issue was, in fact, appealed, but only whether the order was a final state court
   judgment in a particular case and thus was appealable.”) (internal quotations
   omitted). She notes that the doctrine does not preclude federal courts from
   reviewing void state court judgments. See Burciaga v. Deutsche Bank Nat’l
   Tr. Co., 871 F.3d 380, 384−85 (5th Cir. 2017). So Nicholson argues that the
   federal district court does have jurisdiction to hear this case.
          Under Texas law, appeals are generally reserved for final judgments—
   judgments that fully “dispose of all issues and parties in a case.” N.E. Indep.
   Sch. Dist. v. Aldridge, 400 S.W.2d 893, 895 (Tex. 1966). But when a suit is
   severed, the two or more independent actions each result in separate, final
   appealable judgments. See Van Dyke v. Boswell, O’Toole, Davis & Pickering,
   697 S.W.2d 381, 383 (Tex. 1985); see also Tex. R. Civ. P. 41 (“Any claim

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                                       No. 22-11064

   against a party may be severed and proceeded with separately.”). Thus, “a
   judgment which fully adjudicates one of the severed causes is appealable even
   though the entire controversy as it existed prior to the severance is not deter-
   mined thereby.” Pierce v. Reynolds, 329 S.W.2d 76, 78−79 (Tex. 1959).
           Here, the state trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Bank
   of America and Countrywide on October 30, 2018. The next month, the state
   trial court granted their motion to sever. Thus, under Texas law, the state
   trial court’s summary judgment order became final and appealable when the
   court severed Bank of America and Countrywide’s claims. Therefore, we
   reject Nicholson’s argument that the state appellate court’s judgment was
   void for lack of jurisdiction because the trial court’s judgment was interlocu-
   tory.
           Second, Nicholson also notes that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does
   not apply here because it is limited to cases where “a party suffered an ad-
   verse final judgment rendered by a state’s court of last resort.” Illinois Cent.
   R.R. Co. v. Guy, 682 F.3d 381, 390 (5th Cir. 2012). The state appellate judg-
   ment in this case originates from the state’s intermediate appellate court (i.e.,
   Fort Worth Court of Appeals), and not from the state’s final appellate court
   (i.e., Texas Supreme Court). Our court, in Miller v. Dunn, 35 F.4th 1007,
   1011 (5th Cir. 2022), however, has noted the “uncertainty in this circuit as to
   whether a pending state-court appeal precludes applying the doctrine.” In
   Miller, our court settled previous confusion by holding that the Rooker-Feld-
   man doctrine does not apply “where a state appeal is pending when the fed-
   eral suit is filed.” Id. at 1012.
           Here, unlike in Miller, the state proceedings were no longer pending
   by the time Nicholson filed her complaint in federal court. The Texas Su-
   preme Court denied Nicholson’s petition for review in July 2020, and Ni-
   cholson did not bring suit in federal court until July 2021.

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                                    No. 22-11064

          We accordingly affirm. In addition, we deny Nicholson’s motions to
   strike the Appellees’ brief and to sanction counsel.

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