JACCARD v. BANK OF AMERICA et al

Filing 50

OPINION filed. Signed by Judge Anne E. Thompson on 7/13/2015. (mmh)

NOT FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY
MARILYN JACCARD,
Plaintiff,
Civ. No. 14-7535
v.
OPINION
BANK OF AMERICA, et al.,
Defendants.
THOMPSON, U.S.D.J.
INTRODUCTION
This matter has come before the Court on four motions to dismiss: the Motion to Dismiss
pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) and 12(b)(1) of Defendants McGovern
Legal Services, LLC, Francis J. McGovern, Esq., and Michael Polulak, Esq. (collectively, the
“McGovern Defendants”) (Doc. No. 14); the Motion to Dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) of
Defendant Bank of America, N.A. (“BANA”) (Doc. No. 16); the Motion to Dismiss pursuant to
Rule 12(c) of Defendants Sea Bright Borough Police Department, Brett Friedman, and Marc
Leckstein (collectively, the “Sea Bright Defendants)” (Doc. No. 17); and the Motion to Dismiss
pursuant to Rule 12(c) of Defendants Marc Leckstein and the Sea Bright Condominium
Association, Inc. (the “Condo Association”) (Doc. No. 18). Defendants attack Plaintiff’s federal
claims for violations of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Plaintiff opposes each of Defendants’
motions. (Doc. Nos. 29, 30, 32, and 36). The parties presented oral argument before the Court
on June 23, 2015. Upon consideration of the parties’ written submissions and oral argument, the

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Court will grant Defendants’ motions as to the federal claims and dismiss the pending state law
claims for lack of jurisdiction.
BACKGROUND
These are the basic facts Plaintiff has alleged: Plaintiff bought a condo (the “Condo”) in
the Fountains at Sea Bright development (the “Fountains”) in 1999. This purchase was financed
through a mortgage, which was ultimately refinanced by Countrywide Home Loans
(“Countrywide”). Countrywide was acquired by Defendant Bank of America, NA in January
2008. At all relevant times, a person named Jennifer Hill (“Hill”), not Plaintiff, resided at the
Condo. Plaintiff does not state whether Hill was her tenant, but Plaintiff does not claim that
Hill’s residence at the Condo was illegal or otherwise wrongful.
In 2006, the Condo Association assessed an approximately $5,000 fee to all condo
owners for repairs to the Fountains’ bulkhead. Plaintiff refused to pay this fee. Then, in 2007,
there was a major fire at the Fountains which rendered many of the condos unlivable, but the
Condo Association continued to assess maintenance fees, which Plaintiff alleges was improper.
Plaintiff refused to pay these fees. In August 2007, Plaintiff entered into a temporary hardship
modification with Countrywide, which reduced her mortgage payments to $1,000 for three
months.
In June 2008, the Condo Association filed an action to foreclose on the lien it held
against Plaintiff for the unpaid maintenance fees and bulkhead assessment in New Jersey
Superior Court. Defendant McGovern Legal Services represented the Condo Association in the
lien foreclosure action. In August 2008, Countrywide filed a mortgage foreclosure action against
Plaintiff in Superior Court. The mortgage foreclosure filings claim that Plaintiff defaulted on the
mortgage in April 2008. However, Plaintiff states that she was current on her mortgage

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payments, and that Countrywide had been accepting her payments but not giving her credit for
the payments.
In June 2009, the Condo Association filed an application for default on its foreclosure
action. A few months later, a Writ of Execution for the lien judgment was executed, which
resulted in a sheriff’s sale of Plaintiff’s condo. The Condo Association was the winning bidder
at the sheriff’s sale. However, no court issued a Writ of Possession requiring Plaintiff to
dispossess the Condo after the sheriff’s sale.
The properties at the Fountains were damaged by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. At
some point thereafter, Plaintiff reached out to BANA, which at that time had become Plaintiff’s
mortgagee following its acquisition of Countywide. Then, in December 2012, BANA contacted
Plaintiff and instructed her to meet its insurance adjuster at the Condo. When Plaintiff went to
the Fountains, Defendant Marc Leckstein, President of the Condo Association, saw Plaintiff and
began shouting at her and threatened to have her arrested on the basis that she had no right to be
present there.
Plaintiff alleges that Leckstein then abused his position as a member of the Sea Bright
City Council by having the Sea Bright Police Department issue five criminal summonses and
complaints against Plaintiff for criminal trespass, assault against an officer, and harassment.
Plaintiff alleges that these complaints were issued without probable cause. The complaints were
apparently transferred to the Shrewsbury Borough Court; Plaintiff alleges that this is because
Leckstein, a member of the Sea Bright City Council, presented a conflict of interest.
Plaintiff claims that the criminal complaints and summonses against her were not
properly served on her and that they were fraudulently postmarked so that she would not receive
them until after the summons date of December 19, 2012. In March 2013 the criminal charges

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against Plaintiff were dismissed pursuant to a Consent Order that required Plaintiff to refrain
from entering the Fountains properties.
BANA reinstated the mortgage foreclosure proceedings against Plaintiff in April 2014.
LEGAL STANDARD
On a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, a “defendant bears the burden of
showing that no claim has been presented.” Hedges v. United States, 404 F.3d 744, 750 (3d Cir.
2005). When considering a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a district court should conduct a three-part
analysis. Malleus v. George, 641 F.3d 560, 563 (3d Cir. 2011). “First, the court must ‘take note
of the elements a plaintiff must plead to state a claim.’” Id. (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S.
662, 675 (2009)). Second, the court must accept as true all of a plaintiff’s well-pleaded factual
allegations and construe the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Fowler v.
UPMC Shadyside, 578 F.3d 203, 210–11 (3d Cir. 2009). But, the court should disregard any
conclusory allegations proffered in the complaint. Id. Finally, once the well-pleaded facts have
been identified and the conclusory allegations ignored, a court must next determine whether the
“facts alleged in the complaint are sufficient to show that plaintiff has a ‘plausible claim for
relief.’” Id. at 211 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679). This requires more than a mere allegation
of an entitlement to relief. Id. “A complaint has to ‘show’ such an entitlement with its facts.”
Id. A claim is only plausible if the facts pleaded allow a court reasonably to infer that the
defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged. Id. at 210 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678). Facts
suggesting the “mere possibility of misconduct” fail to show that the plaintiff is entitled to relief.
Id. at 211 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679).
Under Rule 12(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a court will grant judgment on
the pleadings if, on the basis of the pleadings, no material issue of fact remains and the movant is
entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c); Sikirica v. Nationwide Ins. Co.,
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416 F.3d 214, 220 (3d Cir. 2005). The standard governing a Rule 12(c) motion is the same
standard governing motions to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6). Allah v. Hayman, 442 Fed. App’x
632, 635 (3d Cir. Aug. 25, 2011); Spruill v. Gillis, 372 F.3d 218, 223 n.2 (3d Cir. 2004).
ANALYSIS
I.

SECTION 1983 CLAIMS
Claims One, Four, Five, and Nine of Plaintiff’s complaint invoke 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In

order to state a claim under § 1983, a plaintiff must allege that a person acting under color of
state law deprived her of a right secured by the Constitution or the law of the United States.
Opoki v. Educ. Comm’n for Foreign Med. Graduates, 574 Fed. App’x 197, 201 (3d Cir. 2014)
(citing West v. Atkins, 487 U.S. 42 (1988)). Each of Plaintiff’s claims focuses on a different
theory of liability—conspiracy,1 violations of due process and equal protection rights,2
retaliation, and malicious prosecution, respectively—but the central thrust of each of these
claims is the same: namely, that the foreclosure of the Condo was incomplete because there was
no writ of possession issued by a court dispossessing Plaintiff of the Condo, and thus both the
taking of the Condo and the criminal prosecution of Plaintiff for visiting the Condo in December
2012 were violations of Plaintiff’s constitutional rights. Even assuming that all the Defendants

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Though the Court’s analysis will focus on the issue of qualified immunity, the Court also notes that Plaintiff’s
naked allegation that “Defendants reached a meeting of the minds amongst themselves that incidents of abuse of
process would be tolerated and acted on in conspiracy with all Defendants notwithstanding the constitutional
implications of such abuse and the likelihood such conduct would be repeated” (Doc. No. 1, Compl., at ¶ 117), is
insufficient to establish that there could have been a necessarily-complex conspiracy among the diverse group of
Defendants over a period of several years to deprive Plaintiff of her constitutional rights. See Schneller v. Phila.
Newspapers, Inc., 577 Fed. App’x 139, 143 (3d Cir. 2014) (“Stating that the defendants ‘conspired’ and ‘acted in
concert’ is no equivalent to pleading a conspiracy with sufficient factual matter to state a plausible claim upon which
relief can be granted.”); Opoki, 574 Fed. App’x at 202.
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The Court notes that Plaintiff’s allegations concerning her equal protection claim include the statement “The acts
and/or omission of Defendants in this case were performed under color of law and deprived Plaintiff of her Fifth . . .
and Fourteenth Amendment . . . rights under the United States Constitution to due process, compulsory process,
equal protection, and freedom from interference with his fundamental rights as a parent without due process of
law.” (Doc. No. 1, Compl., at ¶ 168) (emphasis added). The Plaintiff’s use of the wrong possessive pronoun, as
well as the reference to a violation of parental rights when there are no allegations that Plaintiff has any children or
that any of the Defendants have somehow violated her parental rights, leads the Court to believe that this claim was
copied-and-pasted from the complaint in another case altogether.
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can be construed as state actors liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Plaintiff’s substantive § 1983
claims would still fail because the Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity.
Under the familiar qualified immunity analysis, “government officials performing
discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their
conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a
reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 817 (1982). Courts
may use their discretion in deciding which prong of the qualified immunity test—whether a
constitutional right was violated or whether the law was clearly established beforehand—to
analyze first. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 236 (2009). Even private actors who can be
considered state actors through the joint action theory are entitled to qualified immunity. Burke
v. Town of Walpole, 405 F.3d 66, 88 (1st Cir. 2005). Thus, if a reasonable person would have
thought that the taking of the Condo was proper and that Plaintiff did not have any right to be
present at the Condo in December 2012, then the Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity
even if Defendant is correct that her rights were violated.
A property owner may lease out her property to a tenant, in which case the property
owner retains ownership of the property but the tenant holds possessory rights to the premises;
such an arrangement creates a landlord-tenant relationship. See Restatment (Second) of
Property, Land. & Ten. § 1.2 (1977). By virtue of having a lease, a tenant can exclude all others
from possession of the property, even the owner. Town of Kearny v. Mun. Sanitary Landfill
Auth., 363 A.2d 390, 394 (N.J. Super. Ct. Law Div. 1976) (“A lease vests exclusive possession
in the tenant for the term even as against the owner in fee.”).
Under New Jersey’s foreclosure laws, when a lienholder forecloses on a lien, “a final
judgment of foreclosure declares a sum certain immediately due and commits the proceeds of the
sale of specific property to its satisfaction. [The property owner] retains legal title to the
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property until the completion of the process of sheriff’s sale, expiration of the redemption period
and transfer of the deed to the successful bidder.” Matter of Mullarkey, 81 B.R. 280, 283
(Bankr. D.N.J. 1987) (internal citations omitted). If the property owner holds a possessory
interest in the property before the foreclosure, as was the case in the two cases cited by Plaintiff,
In re St. Clair, 251 B.R. 660 (D.N.J. 2000) and Matter of Mullarkey, 81 B.R. 280 (Bankr. D.N.J.
1987), the foreclosed-upon owner retains that interest until the foreclosing party obtains a writ of
possession following the transfer of the deed through the sheriff’s sale. In re St. Clair, 251 B.R.
at 665–65; Mullarkey, 81 B.R. at 283. In fact, the foreclosed-upon owner becomes a tenant at
sufferance with the deed purchaser as landlord in this circumstance. In re St. Clair, 251 B.R. at
665. Additionally, the deed purchaser is under no obligation to seek possession of the property.
City Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass’n v. Jacobs, 457 A.2d 1211, 1213 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1983)
(explaining that the foreclosing mortgagee “is not required to assert his right to possession,” and
that not doing so may be a prudent course of action because ownership may be an economic
liability).
However, if the owner has leased the property to a tenant before the foreclosure, the
tenant retains her possessory rights through the foreclosure process until the deed purchaser
obtains a writ of possession or other order from a court awarding possession to the deed
purchaser. See 30 New Jersey Practice § 21.1 (noting that New Jersey’s Anti-Eviction Act,
N.J.S.A. 2A18–61.1 et. seq. “applies to mortgagees foreclosing on residential premises. This
means that in most cases a lender can only evict a protected residential tenant after the sheriff’s
sale when ‘good cause’ or other grounds exist under the Anti-Eviction Act. Generally, the
foreclosing mortgagee must then commence a separate summary dispossess action in tenancy
court.”); see also Chase Manhattan Bank v. Josephson, 638 A.2d 1301, 1314 (N.J. 1994)
(overruling earlier precedent and holding that the Anti-Eviction Act “protects tenants from
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eviction by foreclosing mortgagees irrespective of whether their tenancy was established before
or after the execution of the mortgage.”).
To simplify matters, we can say, then, that the two basic forms of property interests—
ownership and possession—are legally transferred in a foreclosure proceeding through two
separate instruments: ownership is transferred through the deed following the sheriff’s sale and
possession is transferred through a writ of possession (or similar order) from a court. The fact
that a writ of possession only speaks to possessory interest is reflected in the form writ of
possession contained in the New Jersey Rules of Court, which is reproduced here:
WHEREAS, on _____, 20__, by a certain judgment of the Superior Court of New
Jersey, Law Division, Special Civil Part, _____ County, in a cause therein
pending, wherein _____ is (are) the Plaintiff(s) and _____ is (are) the
Defendant(s), it was ordered and adjudged that the Plaintiff(s) recover the
possession of the lands and premises, with appurtenances, described in the
Complaint from the Defendant(s) which premises are located at: _____(street
address) _____ (City, State, Zip Code) the possession of which the Defendant(s)
have unlawfully deprived the Plaintiff(s), as appears to us of record.
Writ of Possession, N.J. Rules of Court, Appendix XI-Y (emphasis added).
Thus, in the situation where a property owner leased her property to a tenant, and then the
owner’s creditors brought a foreclosure action against the owner and took ownership of the
property through the purchase of the deed at the sheriff’s sale, a reasonable person would think
that the tenant continued to hold an exclusive possessory interest in the property and that the
foreclosed-upon owner had no legal interest whatsoever in the property. There would be no
reason for the deed purchasers to believe that a writ of possession was needed to dispossess the
foreclosed-upon owner because there would be no reason to believe that the foreclosed-upon
owner had any possessory rights before the foreclosure.
In this case, Plaintiff has alleged that at all relevant times, Jennifer Hill was the resident
of the Condo and that, at least until the sheriff’s sale, Plaintiff was the owner of the Condo. (Doc.
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1, Compl., at ¶¶ 25, 28). In the Emergent Application for Stay of Sheriff’s Sale that Plaintiff
filed October 26, 2009 seeking to stay the sheriff’s sale of the Condo in New Jersey Superior
Court, Chancery Division, Plaintiff made references to the fact that Hill was paying rent. (Doc.
No. 14-2, Decl. of Sayles, at 61–62).3 Plaintiff has not alleged that Hill was Plaintiff’s tenant.
Plaintiff has alleged that she, Plaintiff Jaccard, was in possession of the Condo in December
2012, and that her possessory rights were “well established and known to all concerned.” (Doc.
No. 1, Compl., at ¶¶ 86–87). However, whether Plaintiff had a right to possess the Condo is a
legal question, and these allegations are the kind of conclusory statements that need not be
accepted as true in the motion to dismiss analysis. See Iqbal, 556 US at 681. If Plaintiff and Hill
had a standard landlord-tenant relationship, then Plaintiff would have had no possessory interests
in the Condo at the time of foreclosure. Town of Kearny, 363 A.2d at 394. For Plaintiff to have
retained a possessory interest in the Condo despite the fact that Hill was the resident, Plaintiff
and Hill would have needed to have a joint tenancy or a tenancy in common. 48A C.J.S. Joint
Tenancy § 1 (“Although a joint tenancy and a tenancy in common are separate and distinct
estates, they are alike to the extent that in both cases, the cotenants hold by unity of possession.”)
Whether Plaintiff in fact held a possessory interest in the Condo or not, the Court finds
that a reasonable person would have thought that Plaintiff had no possessory rights to the Condo
either before or after the foreclosure, given that Hill was the resident of the Condo at all relevant
times. A reasonable person would have believed that Hill was Plaintiff’s tenant, and that when
the deed to the Condo was transferred to the Condo Association all of Plaintiff’s property rights
to the Condo—both ownership and possession—were extinguished. Thus, there was no reason

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Though this fact is not alleged in the Complaint, the Court may consider an “undisputedly authentic document” in
a motion to dismiss. Saponaro v. Grindr, LLC, 2015 WL 1137870, at *1 n.1 (D.N.J March 13, 2015) (quoting In re
Burlington Coat Factory Sec. Litig., 114 F.3d 1410, 1426 (3d Cir. 1997)).
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for any of the Defendants to have believed that a writ of possession was needed to complete the
foreclosure against Plaintiff.
Accordingly, even if Plaintiff is correct that she did maintain a possessory interest in the
Condo after the foreclosure, there is no way for a reasonable person to have known that fact. A
reasonable person would have thought that the taking of the Condo from Plaintiff was proper and
that Plaintiff did not have any right to be present at the Condo in December 2012. Thus,
Defendants are entitled to qualified immunity on all of Plaintiff’s § 1983 claims, as the property
rights that underlie those claims were not well-established at the time regardless of whether they
were even legally valid at all.
II.

OTHER FEDERAL CLAIMS
A. Claim Two, Violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
Plaintiff claims that BANA violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”)

through its efforts to foreclose on her mortgage using false statements in violation of 15 U.S.C. §
1692a(5). BANA moves to dismiss on the grounds that it is not a debt collector under the
FDCPA, and thus cannot be liable under that statutory scheme. In Oppong v. First Union Mortg.
Corp., mortgagee Wells Fargo argued that it was not a debt collector under the FDCPA but a
creditor. The Third Circuit explained that “a business may be a ‘debt collector’ because its
‘principal purposes’ is the collection of debts or because it ‘regularly’ engages in the collection
of debts. This definition of ‘debt collector’ excludes creditors who attempt to collect their own
debts, does not exclude an entity in Wells Fargo’s position who has acquired a debt that was
already in default.” Oppong v. First Union Mortg. Corp., 215 Fed. App’x 114, 118 (3d Cir.
2007). Plaintiff has alleged that she refinanced her mortgage with Countrywide, and Plaintiff
also acknowledges that BANA is the successor to Countrywide. (Doc. No. 1, Compl., at ¶¶ 10,
29). Plaintiff has not alleged that BANA acquired Plaintiff’s debt for the purposes of collecting
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it. In fact, Plaintiff has alleged that BANA acquired Countrywide over half a year before a
foreclosure action was brought against her. (Doc. No. 1, Compl., at ¶ 49–50). Thus, for these
purposes BANA was a creditor, not a debt collector; it sought to collect its own debt, albeit debt
that was issued by a predecessor. See Kloss v. RBS Citizens, N.A., 996 F.Supp.2d 574, 588 (E.D.
Mich. 2014) (“Here, Defendant, through a merger involving CCO Mortgage Corp., obtained the
debt before Plaintiffs were in default. Thus, Defendant is not a debt collector under the FDCPA,
and Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim upon which the Court could grant relief.”). Plaintiff’s
FDCPA claim will be dismissed.
B. Claim Three, Violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations
(RICO) Act
In her third claim, Plaintiff alleges that all the Defendants were associated through a
scheme to defraud Plaintiff by making false statements and filing fraudulent civil and criminal
actions against Plaintiff, and that such conduct constitutes a RICO violation. Plaintiff’s RICO
claim in this case is very similar to the RICO claim made by the plaintiffs in the case Ottilio v.
Valley Nat’l Bancorp, Civ. No. 13-7154, before this same Court. The Court notes that the
plaintiffs in Ottilio were represented by the same attorney representing Plaintiff Jaccard in the
present case. In Ottilio, this Court dismissed the RICO claim, and the Third Circuit affirmed that
ruling. See Ottilio v. Valley Nat’l Bancorp, 591 Fed. App’x 167, 168–69 (3d Cir. 2015).
The Court dismissed the RICO claim in Ottilio on two grounds. The first ground was
that the Ottilio plaintiffs had not properly pled at least two predicate acts of racketeering. Ottilio
v. Valley Nat’l Bancorp, 2014 WL 906138, at *2 (D.N.J. March 7, 2014). The Ottilio plaintiffs
based their RICO claim on predicates of mail and wire fraud, just as Plaintiff here has done.
First the Court noted that, to comply with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b)’s particularity
standard, a mail or wire fraud claim “must ‘identify the purpose of the mailing within the
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defendant’s fraudulent scheme and specify the fraudulent statement, the time, place, and speaker
and content of the alleged misrepresentations” and must specify which defendant among a group
of defendants made the fraudulent statement. Id. (citing Dist. 1199P Health & Welfare Plan v.
Janssen, L.P., N. 06-3044(FLW), 2008 WL 5413105, * 11 (D.N.J. Dec. 23, 2008); Lum v. Bank
of America, 361 F.3d 217, 224 (3d Cir. 2004) (abrogated in part on other grounds by Bell Atl.
Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 557 (2007))). Then, the Court found that the Otillio plaintiffs
had failed to meet the particularity standard for the mail and wire fraud predicates as they had
only alleged that “the Defendants used the U.S. mails and wirings sent or delivered through
private or commercial interstate carriers in furtherance of their enterprise,” and that they made
fraudulent misrepresentations. Ottilio, 2014 WL 906138, at *2. Here, Plaintiff Jaccard has only
alleged that “Defendants communicated with Plaintiff, with each other, and with New Jersey
Superior Court, various municipal courts, and the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Department via
mail, telephone, wire, and electronic mail on many occasions within a ten year period
immediately preceding the date of this Complaint” to enact a fraud on Plaintiff. (Doc. No. 1,
Compl. at ¶ 139). Just as in Ottilio, Plaintiff Jaccard has failed to identify specific fraudulent
statements and which of the Defendants made them. Accordingly, Plaintiff has insufficiently
pled the predicates of a RICO claim.
The other basis for the Court’s dismissal of the RICO claim in Ottilio was that the
plaintiffs only alleged a single fraudulent scheme, and they were not able “to identify other
individuals or entities that were deprived of property by the alleged criminal enterprise,” even
when specifically questioned on that point by the Court at oral argument. Ottilio v. Valley Nat’l
Bancorp, 2014 WL 906138, at *3 (D.N.J. March 7, 2014). This failure to identify other alleged
victims was fatal to the plaintiffs’ RICO claims because, as the Court explained in its opinion, a
plaintiff must allege a pattern of racketeering activity that involves “‘at least two acts of
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racketeering,’” ( “‘that the racketeering acts are related, and that they amount to or pose a threat
of continued criminal activity,’” and that “allegations of a single fraudulent scheme designed to
deprive a single victim of his property on a single occasion do not adequately allege a RICO
violation.” Id. (citing 18. U.S.C. § 1961(5); Kehr Packages v. Fidelcor, Inc., 926 F.2d 1406,
1412 (3d Cir. 1991); and Zahl, M.D. v. New Jersey Dep’t of Law & Pub. Safety, No. 063749(JLL), 2009 WL 806540, *7 (D.N.J. Mar. 27, 2009) (aff’d sub nom. Zahl. v. New Jersey
Dep’t of Law & Pub. Safety Div. of Consumer Affairs, 428 F. App’x 205 (3d Cir. 2011))). In the
present case, too, Plaintiff failed to identify another victim of this alleged RICO scheme in her
Complaint, her Opposition papers, or when her attorney was questioned by the Court at oral
argument. For these reasons, Plaintiff’s RICO claim here will be dismissed as well.
II.

STATE LAW CLAIMS
All of Plaintiff’s federal claims are dismissed. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3) and

Third Circuit precedent, the Court will decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the
remaining state law claims. Kalick v. Northwest Airlines Corp., 372 Fed. App’x 317, 322 (3d
Cir. 2010).
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, Defendants’ motions will be granted. An appropriate order
will follow.

/s/ Anne E. Thompson
ANNE E. THOMPSON, U.S.D.J.

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