Cormier v. Horkan , 397 F. App'x 550 ( 2010 )

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
________________________ U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-11089 SEPT 23, 2010
Non-Argument Calendar JOHN LEY
CLERK
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 7:09-cv-00068-HL
DENNY C. CORMIER,
lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
HONORABLE FRANK D. HORKAN,
Superior Court Judge,
DWIGHT MAY,
GEORGE ERVIN PERDUE, III,
Governor of Georgia,
a.k.a. Sonny Perdue,
JOHN B. ALDERMAN,
Chairman of Colquitt County Commissioners, Georgia,
GEORGIA, COLQUITT COUNTY, et. al.,
lllllllllllllllllllll Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Georgia
________________________
(September 23, 2010)
Before BLACK, PRYOR and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Denny C. Cormier appeals the district court’s order dismissing his pro se
complaint, which alleged various constitutional and statutory violations in
connection with his state court divorce proceedings and requirement to pay
alimony, for failure to state a claim. The underlying dispute arose after the
Georgia Superior Court, per Judge Horkan, entered a final decree dissolving the
marriage and awarding Cormier’s ex-wife alimony in 2005. Cormier v. Cormier,
280 Ga. 693, 693, 631 S.E.2d 663, 664 (Ga. 2006) (Cormier I). In June 2009,
Cormier filed the present action in federal court against seven defendants,1
alleging violations of the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, 42
U.S.C. §§ 1982, 1983, 1985, 1994, the federal and Georgia RICO statutes, and the
common-law torts of intentional infliction of emotional distress and tortious
interference with business relations. Cormier’s complaint sought to invalidate the
state-court alimony order, among other relief. The district court granted the
defendants’ motions to dismiss, holding that Governor Perdue and Judge Horkan
were immune from suit under the doctrines of sovereign and judicial immunity and
1
The defendants included the Governor of Georgia (“Sonny” Perdue), Judge
Horkan, the Chairman of Colquitt County Commissioners, Colquitt County, Cormier’s ex-wife,
her attorney, and Cormier’s mother-in-law.
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that Cormier’s complaint failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted
as to all counts. Accordingly, the court dismissed Cormier’s requests for
declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. This appeal ensued.
Although the district court did not address the defendants’ argument in their
motions to dismiss that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction over Cormier’s
complaint, we are compelled to review the district court’s subject-matter
jurisdiction de novo. See Zakrzewski v. McDonough, 490 F.3d 1264, 1267 (11th
Cir. 2007). “A federal court must always dismiss a case upon determining that it
lacks subject matter jurisdiction, regardless of the stage of the proceedings, and
facts outside of the pleadings may be considered as part of that determination.”
Goodman ex rel. Goodman v. Sipos, 259 F.3d 1327, 1332 n.6 (11th Cir. 2001).
After thorough review of the record and the parties’ briefs, we conclude that the
district court lacked jurisdiction over Cormier’s complaint, which was barred by
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. See Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413,
415-16, 44 S. Ct. 149, 150 (1923); D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460
U.S. 462, 476–82, 103 S. Ct. 1303, 1311–15 (1983).
“The Rooker-Feldman doctrine places limits on the subject-matter
jurisdiction of federal district courts and courts of appeal over certain matters
related to previous state court litigation.” Goodman, 259 F.3d at 1332. Under the
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Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal district courts cannot review final state court
judgments because “that task is reserved for state appellate courts or, as a last
resort, the United States Supreme Court.” Casale v. Tillman, 558 F.3d 1258, 1260
(11th Cir. 2009). The Supreme Court has only applied the doctrine on two
occasions, and has recently reiterated that the scope of the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine is exceedingly narrow, “confined to cases of the kind from which the
doctrine acquired its name: cases brought by state-court losers complaining of
injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before the district court
proceedings commenced and inviting district court review and rejection of those
judgments.” Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284,
125 S. Ct. 1517, 1521–22 (2005); see also Nicholson v. Shafe, 558 F.3d 1266,
1268 (11th Cir. 2009).
Prior to Exxon Mobil, our circuit had traditionally applied a four-factor test
to guide the application of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, finding that it bars
federal jurisdiction where: “(1) the party in federal court is the same as the party in
state court; (2) the prior state court ruling was a final or conclusive judgment on
the merits, (3) the party seeking relief in federal court had a reasonable
opportunity to raise its federal claims in the state court proceeding, and (4) the
issue before the federal court was either adjudicated by the state court or was
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inextricably intertwined with the state court’s judgment.” Amos v. Glynn County
Bd. of Tax Assessors, 347 F.3d 1249, 1266 n.11 (11th Cir. 2003) (citations
omitted). However, due to the Supreme Court’s cautionary statement in Exxon
Mobil that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine “has sometimes been construed to extend
far beyond the contours of the Rooker and Feldman cases,” 544 U.S. at 283, 125
S. Ct. at 1521, we have since declined to adhere to the Amos test. See Nicholson,
558 F.3d at 1274 (electing to apply Exxon-Mobil’s strict language confining the
doctrine to “cases brought by state-court losers complaining of injuries caused by
state-court judgments rendered before the district court proceedings commenced
and inviting district court review and rejection of those judgments” as opposed to
the Amos test).
Thus, for the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to apply under the strictures of
Exxon-Mobil, we must first determine whether the state court “rendered judgment
before the district court proceedings commenced.” See id. Cormier filed his
federal complaint in this lawsuit on June 2, 2009, almost three years after the
Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the Superior Court’s final decree in his state
court divorce action. See Cormier I, 280 Ga. at 696, 631 S.E.2d at 665. Because
Cormier exhausted his state court remedies well before he filed this federal suit,
the state proceedings had ended for purposes of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. Cf.
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Nicholson, 558 F.3d at 1278 (“[B]ecause the Appellants filed the instant federal
action while the state court action continued in the appeals process in state court,
the state proceedings had not ended.”).
Secondly, we must determine whether a plaintiff is a state-court loser who is
complaining of injuries caused by state-court judgments. See Exxon-Mobil, 544
U.S. at 284, 125 S. Ct. at 1521–22. In doing so, our circuit has continued to apply
the fourth factor of the Amos test, evaluating whether the plaintiff’s claims are
“inextricably intertwined” with the state court judgment. See Casale, 558 F.3d at
1260 (quoting Feldman, 460 U.S. at 482 n.16, 103 S. Ct. at 1315 n.16). “A claim
is inextricably intertwined if it would effectively nullify the state court judgment
or it succeeds only to the extent that the state court wrongly decided the issues.”
Id. (internal quotations and citations omitted). Evaluating Cormier’s complaint
under this standard, we conclude that it falls directly within the scope of the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine’s jurisdictional bar.
In his complaint, Comier generally seeks to invalidate the state court’s
alimony ruling through various constitutional, statutory, and common law
challenges. The essence of his complaint is that various private and state actors
conspired to use the Georgia Alimony Statutes, O.C.G.A. §§ 19-6-1 et seq., to
place him into a condition of involuntary servitude through an unconstitutional
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alimony-peonage contract. Although Cormier seeks damages in the amount of $1
million for his alleged injuries, he also expressly prays for an injunction setting
aside the current alimony order, any future orders seeking to enforce the court’s
divorce decree, and the final judgment of the Georgia Superior Court.
In Casale v. Tillman, we held that the federal courts lacked subject matter
jurisdiction over a similar complaint, which sought to invalidate a state-rendered
contempt order in connection with a divorce proceeding. 558 F.3d at 1261. Like
Cormier, the plaintiff in Casale attempted to use the federal courts to enjoin his
ex-wife from enforcing an aspect of the state-court judgment, arguing that the
contempt orders, which held him in contempt for discontinuing retirement
payments to his ex-wife, violated the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’
Protection Act (“FSPA”), 10 U.S.C. § 1408, by effectively compelling him to
retire from military service. Id. We concluded that such a claim, although a
federal preemption challenge, was “inextricably intertwined” with the state court
judgment and that Casale was “just the sort of ‘state-court loser’ the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine was designed to turn aside.” Id. (alteration omitted).
We concluded that “[i]f Casale believed the state court’s result was based on a
legal error, the proper response was the same one open to all litigants who are
unhappy with the judgment of a trial court: direct appeal.” Id.7
Cormier’s complaint is equally barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine
because his constitutional and statutory challenges are essentially an effort to
block enforcement of the state court’s alimony order. Success on his federal
claims would “effectively nullify” the state court judgment; thus, his claims are
inextricably intertwined with the divorce action, and Cormier should have pursued
all of his claims on direct appeal. See id. Accordingly, his complaint falls within
the confines of the Rooker-Feldman jurisdictional bar, and it is unnecessary for us
to address Cormier’s claims raised on appeal.2 In conclusion, we vacate the
district court judgment and remand with instructions to dismiss Cormier’s
complaint for lack of jurisdiction.3
VACATED and REMANDED; DISMISSED for lack of jurisdiction.
2
We note that Cormier abandoned many claims by not raising them in his briefs on
appeal. Timson v. Sampson, 518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008) (stating that, although pro se
briefs are liberally construed,“issues not briefed on appeal by a pro se litigant are deemed
abandoned”). As to the issues Cormier did raise, we find them all meritless. Even if the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine was not dispositive of Cormier’s lawsuit, we would still affirm the district
court’s dismissal of Cormier’s complaint for the reasons set forth in its opinion, which warrants
no further discussion.
3
Cormier’s motion for leave to file an amended reply brief is granted.
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