David Thomas v. City of Lakeland

Filing

Opinion issued by court as to Appellant David Oliver Thomas. Decision: Vacated and Remanded. Opinion type: Non-Published. Opinion method: Per Curiam. The opinion is also available through the Court's Opinions page at this link http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions.

Case: 17-13544

Date Filed: 04/06/2018

Page: 1 of 4

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 17-13544
Non-Argument Calendar
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D.C. Docket No. 8:16-cv-02029-CEH-MAP

DAVID OLIVER THOMAS,
A People of the State in Florida,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
CITY OF LAKELAND,
A Municipal Corporation(s) of the State of Florida,
Defendant-Appellee,
UNKNOWN CITY OF LAKELAND ADMINISTRATORS,
with discretionary authority,
Defendant.
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
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(April 6, 2018)

Case: 17-13544

Date Filed: 04/06/2018

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Before JULIE CARNES, NEWSOM, and HULL, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
David Thomas, proceeding pro se, appeals the district court’s dismissal of
his complaint against the City of Lakeland, alleging that the City’s building-codeenforcement actions against his property violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law.
The district court dismissed Thomas’s complaint for failure to state a claim after
concluding that his complaint was barred by the applicable statute of limitations
and the doctrine of res judicata. In addition to defending the district court’s
dismissal on the merits, the City argues on appeal that the district court lacked
subject-matter jurisdiction to review Thomas’s complaint under the RookerFeldman doctrine, 1 because Thomas had previously challenged the City’s very
same code-enforcement actions in a state-court proceeding, which the state court
dismissed on the merits and which Thomas opted not to appeal. We agree with the
City that, in the peculiar circumstances of this case, Rooker-Feldman applies and
the district court therefore lacked jurisdiction.2
Under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal district courts and courts of
appeals lack subject-matter jurisdiction to review final state-court decisions. May
v. Morgan Cty. Ga., 878 F.3d 1001, 1004 (11th Cir. 2017). Recently, the Supreme
1

The Rooker-Feldman doctrine derives from Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923),
and D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983).
2

We review questions of jurisdiction de novo. Ehlen Floor Covering, Inc. v. Lamb, 660 F.3d
1283, 1287 (11th Cir. 2011).
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Court has sought to rein in the Rooker-Feldman doctrine by emphasizing the
doctrine’s limited applicability, which it has narrowly confined to suits that invite
reversal or rejection of a state-court judgment. Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic
Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005). Even so, it remains the case that “a state
court loser cannot avoid Rooker-Feldman’s bar by cleverly cloaking her pleadings
in the cloth of a different claim.” May, 878 F.3d at 1005. “The doctrine applies
both to federal claims raised in the state court and to those inextricably intertwined
with the state court’s judgment.” Casale v. Tillman, 558 F.3d 1258, 1260 (11th
Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The code-enforcement challenges that Thomas presented in federal district
court mimic almost precisely the challenges that he previously brought—and lost,
conclusively—in state court. The only difference, so far as we can tell, is that
whereas in his state-court suit Thomas challenged the City’s actions exclusively on
state constitutional grounds, he now challenges the very same actions on both state
and federal constitutional grounds—all of which, significantly, cover the same
basic territory. Therefore, Thomas’s suit asks the federal courts to reject the
judgment of the state court that dismissed his earlier code-enforcement challenges,
and thus falls within the narrow class of cases to which the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine applies. Accordingly, the district court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction

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to entertain his claim. We vacate and remand to the district court to dismiss for
lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
VACATED AND REMANDED.

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