RRD Partner Michael Ryan and Associate Jonathan Zellner recently obtained a dismissal of a plaintiff’s complaint on behalf of a Connecticut municipality, its police department and its chief of police in an action in which the plaintiff sought to prevent eviction from his property. The plaintiff had lost a foreclosure action in the Connecticut Superior Court, which entered a judgment of strict foreclosure. After title to the property was transferred to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, a Connecticut State Marshal served the plaintiff with a notice to leave the property. The plaintiff thereafter filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the municipality, the police department, and the chief of police were being called upon to assist the State Marshal in evicting him from the property. In his complaint, the plaintiff purported to allege violations of his Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights as well as claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
United States District Court Judge Alfred Covello ordered dismissal of the complaint on the basis that it was barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. This doctrine — which developed from the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923), and District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983) — prevents a United States District Court from reviewing final judgments of a state court in judicial proceedings. Judge Covello held that the plaintiff’s action against the municipality, the police department, and the chief of police was effectively an action that attempted to call into question the validity of and to undo the state court’s judgment of strict foreclosure. Judge Covello also found that the case was not ripe for adjudication with respect to the municipality, the police department, and the chief of police, as none of these defendants was alleged to have taken any action to evict or to assist in evicting the plaintiff from the property.