KANNE, Circuit Judge.
Yvette and L.V. Crawford were evicted from their home by sheriff's deputies enforcing a state court foreclosure judgment. Their mortgagee, Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., had obtained the judgment after the Crawfords defaulted on their mortgage. The Crawfords sought relief in federal court, naming Countrywide, their foreclosure suit counsel, their county sheriff, and their county board of commissioners in a slipshod complaint that spanned twenty-two counts. On various motions, the district court dismissed two defendants, declined to allow the addition of two others, dismissed two claims for want of subject matter jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, and ultimately
Countrywide originated a mortgage loan to the Crawfords, an African-American couple, in 2001. They used the loan to purchase a home in La Porte, Indiana, where they lived until employment difficulties and mounting medical bills relating to their physical disabilities caused them to fall behind in their mortgage payments. Fearing foreclosure, they agreed to pay $995 to Foreclosure Solutions in exchange for its help in reaching a renegotiation deal with their mortgagee.
Countrywide did not renegotiate the loan's terms and instead initiated a foreclosure proceeding in La Porte County Circuit Court. Foreclosure Solutions informed the Crawfords that it had hired attorney Gary Dilk to represent them in the proceedings. Dilk entered an appearance in the suit, but he never contacted them and did not resist Countrywide's motion for summary judgment; the record indicates that neither Foreclosure Solutions nor Dilk ever did anything else on the Crawfords' behalf. The state court entered a foreclosure judgment in the mortgagee's favor on August 4, 2006. The Crawfords moved for relief from the foreclosure judgment on August 2, 2007, but the state court denied their motion.
A sheriff's sale of the home occurred on December 13, 2006. Mortgage company Fannie Mae purchased the property, but it continued to use Countrywide to service it. Shortly after the Crawfords' motion for relief was denied, Fannie Mae moved for a writ of assistance to evict the Crawfords and take possession of its property. The writ of assistance issued on June 25, 2008, but the Crawfords convinced the La Porte circuit court to stay their eviction during their appeal of the court's denial of their motion for relief from the foreclosure judgment. That stay was conditioned, however, upon the Crawfords' monthly payment of $1,200 into a court-administered escrow account. When the Crawfords did not make full payment in October 2008, the writ of assistance became immediately effective. In November 2008, Countrywide filed a notice that it intended to evict the Crawfords pursuant to the writ of assistance.
An unidentified man appeared at the Crawfords' home twice in May 2009, claiming to be from the La Porte County Sheriff's Department (though he was not in uniform). He told them both times that he would return with uniformed deputies to evict them around the end of the month. On May 27, 2009, La Porte County Sheriff's Deputies arrived at the Crawfords' home and ordered them to depart in compliance with the court's orders. The deputies had a barking dog with them, and they allegedly threatened to release the dog into the house, though their reasons for doing so do not appear in the record. The Crawfords complied and departed the home.
The Crawfords subsequently filed nearly simultaneous suits in the La Porte Circuit Court and in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. The substantially identical suits named Countrywide, the La Porte County Board of Commissioners, La Porte County Sheriff Michael Mollenhauer, attorney Gary Dilk, and a John Doe as defendants. The defendants removed the state court action to the federal district court, the two cases were effectively consolidated, and the district court administratively closed the original federal action. Dilk, Sheriff Mollenhauer, and the Commissioners moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court granted their motions on February 12, 2010. In
Countrywide, the sole remaining defendant,
The Crawfords timely appealed the district court's final judgment. They later filed a motion asking this court to take judicial notice of materials similar to those presented to the district court pertaining to the practice of "robo-signing" by mortgagees and national economic conditions. We denied their motion by our order of December 9, 2010.
The Crawfords present four issues on appeal. We will take up their jurisdictional issue first to demonstrate that this case is properly before us. We will then consider the propriety of the district court's entry of summary judgment before evaluating its dismissal of two defendants due to the Crawfords' failure to state claims against them. Finally, we will briefly address the district court's denial of the Crawfords' motion to add a defendant.
The Crawfords first ask this court to review whether the Rooker-Feldman doctrine divested the district court of subject matter jurisdiction. We must satisfy ourselves at the outset that we have jurisdiction over this appeal, even though all parties argue that we do and that the doctrine does not apply. See Gen. Ins. Co. of Am. v. Clark Mall Corp., 644 F.3d 375, 378-79 (7th Cir.2011).
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine is jurisdictional in nature. Freedom Mortg. Corp. v. Burnham Mortg., Inc., 569 F.3d 667, 670 (7th Cir.2009). It prevents lower federal courts from reviewing state-court judgments, over which only the United States Supreme Court has federal appellate jurisdiction. Skinner v. Switzer, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 131 S.Ct. 1289, 1297, 179 L.Ed.2d 233 (2011). It is a "narrow doctrine, confined 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." Kelley v. Med-1 Solutions, LLC, 548 F.3d 600, 603 (7th Cir.2008) (quoting Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 464, 126 S.Ct. 1198, 163 L.Ed.2d 1059 (2006)). The doctrine does not prevent state-court losers from presenting independent claims to a federal district court, even if the new claims involve questions related to those in the original state court proceedings. Skinner, 131 S.Ct. at 1297.
We review the district court's determination of its subject matter jurisdiction in light of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine de novo. Kelley, 548 F.3d at 603-04. "In applying the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the immediate inquiry is whether the federal plaintiff seeks to set aside a state court judgment or whether he is, in fact, presenting an independent claim." Taylor, 374 F.3d at 532 (quotation marks omitted). The Crawfords' briefs do nothing to clarify exactly what relief the Crawfords sought in their complaint—specifically, whether reversal of the state court judgment of foreclosure was a necessary part of that relief and, if so, to which claims that relief pertained. They argue only that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine is over-applied by district courts and therefore should not have been found to preclude jurisdiction below. But the Supreme Court's general admonitions regarding frequent and inappropriate application of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, see, e.g., Skinner, 131 S.Ct. at 1297, shed no light on its application given the procedural posture and facts of the Crawfords' particular case. Indeed, their briefs do not even mention the dismissal of two of their claims, let alone explain why dismissal was erroneous. Their opposition to the dismissals is therefore waived. See Mahaffey v. Ramos, 588 F.3d 1142, 1146 (7th Cir. 2009).
Regardless, we are convinced that the district court properly applied the Rooker-Feldman doctrine in considering the first and ninth claims. "To determine whether Rooker-Feldman bars a claim, we look beyond the four corners of the complaint to discern the actual injury claimed by the plaintiff." Johnson v. Orr, 551 F.3d 564, 568 (7th Cir.2008). The Crawfords' injury in claims one and nine—the foreclosure of their mortgage—was effectuated by the state court's judgment. At oral argument, the Crawfords' counsel was pointedly asked, "Aren't you really attacking the state court proceeding?" He responded, "That is certainly part of what we were doing, Your Honor. And that's
We next consider whether the district court had subject matter jurisdiction for the twenty remaining claims. None of those claims cogently attacks the underlying state-court judgment. To the extent that any claim alleged an independent ground for relief, relief could be granted without necessarily impugning the state court's judgment. See Remer v. Burlington Area Sch. Dist., 205 F.3d 990, 998 (7th Cir.2000) (Rooker-Feldman doctrine not implicated where district court "would be free to fashion relief that would not contradict the state circuit court's injunction"); TruServ Corp. v. Flegles, Inc., 419 F.3d 584, 591 (7th Cir.2005). These claims may involve facts or questions relevant in the original state-court action, but because the claims were neither decided in the state court nor inextricably intertwined with its judgment, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine did not divest the district court of jurisdiction to consider their merits. Skinner, 131 S.Ct. at 1297; Kelley, 548 F.3d at 603. Accordingly, the district court did not err in considering the Crawfords' remaining claims.
The district court granted summary judgment in Countrywide's favor on all remaining counts. The Crawfords contend that summary judgment was inappropriate for two reasons: the district court applied an incorrect standard, and issues of material fact persisted. We review the district court's entry of summary judgment de novo. Estate of Davis v. Wells Fargo Bank, 633 F.3d 529, 539 (7th Cir.2011).
"The court shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). When Countrywide's motion for summary judgment adequately challenged the elements of their claims, the Crawfords assumed the burden to identify specific facts in the record that demonstrated a genuine issue for trial. Estate of Davis, 633 F.3d at 539. The Crawfords protest that burden, however. They argue that Countrywide's materials in support of its motion were insufficient to foreclose the possibility that there were disputes of material fact, so no burden to produce supportive evidence fell to them.
The Crawfords' argument arises from their misapplication of Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970). Adickes involved a
A party moving for summary judgment need not introduce evidence rendering its opponents' claims altogether impossible in order to trigger the opponent's burden to answer with its own supporting evidence. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). Indeed, Celotex flatly contradicts the Crawfords' interpretation of Adickes:
Id. at 325, 106 S.Ct. 2548. Countrywide's summary judgment motion comprehensively challenged the factual support and legal soundness of the Crawfords' myriad claims, and Countrywide filed a statement of material facts it alleged were not in dispute. The Crawfords thus acquired the burden to introduce affidavits or cite evidence in the record demonstrating what genuine issues remained for trial. Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(e) (2009); N.D. Ind. L.R. 56.1(a) (2009); Eberts v. Goderstad, 569 F.3d 757, 767 (7th Cir.2009). The Crawfords did not meet that obligation. They instead submitted a statement alleging predatory lending practices by Countrywide, never addressing Countrywide's proposed facts. Under the court's local rules—and as contemplated by Fed. R.Civ.P. 56(e)—the district court appropriately took Countrywide's stated facts to be undisputed. It then considered which, if either, party was entitled to judgment as a matter of law given those facts. We conclude that the district court thus employed the proper standard for summary judgment.
The Crawfords appear to contend that, even if the district court articulated the correct standard, the district court erred in applying that standard in two ways. First, it denied their motions to strike portions of an affidavit submitted by Countrywide, to allow additional discovery, and to take judicial notice of proffered materials. Second, their submitted materials showed that genuine disputes of material fact remained. Neither contention has
The district court declined to strike from a Countrywide employee's affidavit, submitted in support of summary judgment, an allegedly conclusory portion stating that neither the Crawfords' race nor their disabilities factored into Countrywide's actions against them. In arguing that the district court should have stricken the statement as a legal conclusion lacking adequate foundation and that the district court erroneously relied on it in granting summary judgment, the Crawfords do not address the district court's actual rationale for denying their motion. It had determined that striking the statement was unnecessary because the Crawfords neither moved to strike nor challenged with opposing evidence another of the affiant's statements: "Countrywide has taken all of the foregoing and other relevant actions against the Crawfords because of the Crawfords' default under the loan documents and failure to make the payments as required to stay enforcement of the judgment."
The Crawfords also take issue with the district court's denial of their motion to delay its consideration of summary judgment to allow them additional time to conduct discovery as allowed by Rule 56. We review orders denying discovery requests for an abuse of discretion, Little Co. of Mary Hosp. v. Sebelius, 587 F.3d 849, 856 (7th Cir.2009), and appellants must demonstrate prejudice from the denial in order to secure relief from the district court's order on appeal, Walker v. Mueller Indus., Inc., 408 F.3d 328, 334 (7th Cir.2005). The Crawfords present no argument as to why the denial was either an abuse of discretion or prejudicial; they only state the truism that Rule 56 would have allowed the district court to grant their motion. They have thus waived their discovery request argument. See Gross v. Town of Cicero, Ill., 619 F.3d 697, 704-05 (7th Cir. 2010).
The district court also denied the Crawfords' motion to take judicial notice of materials—a settlement, lawsuits, pending enforcement actions between state attorneys general and Countrywide, websites, news articles, a press release, a speech, and position papers—they offered to show Countrywide's predatory lending practices. We review the district court's refusal to take judicial notice of proffered materials for an abuse of discretion. Waid v. Merrill Area Pub. Sch., 130 F.3d 1268, 1272 (7th Cir.1997). The district court found that the materials were not of the type of which it could take judicial notice under Rule 201(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. It noted that the Crawfords sought "judicial notice not of particular discrete facts, but of a number of whole documents" and asked why this would be "a matter of judicial notice and not more generally the admissibility of the documents they have identified." Crawford, 2010 WL 3273715, at *4. In keeping with their pattern throughout this appeal, the Crawfords do not address either of these
The Crawfords' final challenge to the summary judgment order is that they demonstrated disputes of material fact, thus precluding summary judgment. But just what facts they allege to be disputed—and how those facts are material—is a mystery unresolved by their opening brief. Like their response to Countrywide's summary judgment motion, their briefs in this court are "long on generalities on the subject of predatory lending and about the unfairness of their treatment, but short on. . . analysis of their particular claims." Crawford, 2010 WL 3273715, at *5. Not a single line of their briefs specifically addressed any of their individual claims, let alone refuted the district court's persuasive sixteen-page analysis that cogently addressed the facts and law of each individual claim in depth.
The Crawfords did not meet their burden to come forward with specific facts showing that there were genuine issues for trial. See Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). On appeal, they still identify only three categories of facts in the affidavit they submitted in opposition to summary judgment: "(1) the events which ensnared them in the Countrywide web; (2) the bungling of Foreclosure Solutions and attorney Gary Dilk . . . and; (3) the eviction from their home by police officers using a dog to frighten an older African-American woman with disabilities whose husband was at work." (Appellants' Br. at 14.) The first category pertains to their allegations of predatory lending and does not relate "specific facts." The district court correctly determined that the affidavit's allegations within this category were not material. The second and third categories pertain only to defendants the district court had dismissed before the summary judgment stage, so those allegations likewise could not have been material.
A genuine dispute of material fact exists only when the evidence could support a reasonable jury's verdict for the non-moving party. Spivey v. Adaptive Mktg. LLC, 622 F.3d 816, 822 (7th Cir. 2010). The district court ably demonstrated that the evidence before it—even when crediting the affidavit the Crawfords' submitted in opposition to the summary judgment motion—simply could not support a verdict in the Crawfords' favor on any of their claims. In its claim-by-claim analysis, the district court noted that there was no evidence of the elements for some claims and that other individual "claims" did not state independently cognizable causes of action. As the Crawfords do not argue against any of the district court's convincing reasoning on any specific claim, we have no reason to conclude that the district court erred in granting summary judgment.
We turn next to the dismissal of the Crawfords' claims against the La Porte County Sheriff and their foreclosure attorney.
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.
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 *3.
On appeal, the Crawfords again do not address the district court's reasoning on
The Crawfords' fourth and final claim deserves little attention. They moved to add Bank of America, a once-removed parent organization to Countrywide, as another defendant. The proposed addition to the second amended complaint required leave of the district court, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2), and the district court denied their motion.
Because we find no error in the district court's determinations, we AFFIRM its judgments in all respects. However, we VACATE the district court's order of August 10, 2010, and REMAND the case for the limited purpose of permitting the district court to enter a new order specifying which aspects of the Crawfords' complaint were dismissed on jurisdictional grounds and remanding those aspects to the state court from which the case was removed.