Michael B. Butler v. Katherine K. Wood

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FILED
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
________________________ ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
JUNE 17, 2010
No. 09-15880 JOHN LEY
Non-Argument Calendar CLERK
________________________
D. C. Docket No. 09-02023-CV-TWT-1
MICHAEL B. BUTLER,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
KATHERINE K. WOOD,
THE STATE BAR OF GEORGIA,
an agency of the State of Georgia,
Defendants-Appellees.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Georgia
_________________________
(June 17, 2010)
Before BLACK, BARKETT and HULL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Michael B. Butler, pro se, appeals the district court’s dismissal of his civil
rights complaint, filed pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, for lack of subject matter
jurisdiction based on the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.1 Butler’s § 1983 complaint
arose from his disbarment by the Georgia Supreme Court, pursuant to a formal
complaint brought by the State Bar of Georgia (State Bar) charging him with
embezzling funds from a client. The § 1983 complaint named the State Bar and
Katherine Wood, the Special Master who presided over Butler’s disciplinary
proceedings, as defendants.
Butler contends his complaint was not barred by Rooker-Feldman because
(1) since his alleged injury occurred before the Georgia Supreme Court’s
disbarment order, he was not the “loser” of the state court judgment and (2) he
raised an independent claim alleging constitutional violations which arose from the
wrongful conduct of defendants during the State Bar disciplinary proceedings
against him.2
1
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine derives from Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 44 S. Ct. 149,
150 (1923), and D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 103 S. Ct. 1303, 1311-15 (1983).
2
We review “dismissals for lack of subject matter jurisdiction de novo.” Nicholson v.
Shafe, 558 F.3d 1266, 1270 (11th Cir. 2009). A court must dismiss an action if it “determines at
any time that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3). “Pro se pleadings
are held to a less stringent standard than pleadings drafted by attorneys and will, therefore, be
liberally construed.” Tannenbaum v. United States, 148 F.3d 1262, 1263 (11th Cir. 1998).
2
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine provides “lower federal courts are precluded
from exercising appellate jurisdiction over final state-court judgments.”
Nicholson, 558 F.3d at 1268 (quotation omitted). In Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi
Basic Indus. Corp., 125 S. Ct. 1517, 1521-22 (2005), the Supreme Court cautioned
against broadly construing Rooker-Feldman and held the doctrine should be
confined only 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.”
Rooker-Feldman’s reach extends to federal claims raised by the state-court
loser that are deemed to be “inextricably intertwined” with the state court judgment
such as (1) where the success of the federal claim would “effectively nullify” the
state court judgment; and (2) where the federal claim “succeeds only to the extent
that the state court wrongly decided the issues.” Casale v. Tillman, 558 F.3d 1258,
1260 (11th Cir. 2009) (quotation omitted).
The district court did not err in finding Rooker-Feldman barred Butler’s civil
rights complaint because, squarely within the language of Exxon Mobil, he was a
state-court loser who sued in federal court to complain of injuries caused by the
state-court judgment which was rendered before the filing of his federal complaint.
See Nicholson, 558 F.3d at 1268, 1270. To the extent Butler couches his complaint
3
in terms of independent constitutional claims against defendants, those federal
claims were inextricably intertwined with the Georgia Supreme Court’s disbarment
order and, thus, still fell within the confines of the Rooker-Feldman jurisdictional
bar. See Casale, 558 F.3d at 1261.
AFFIRMED.
4