Marvin Davenport v. Roundpoint Mortgage Servicing

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Marvin Davenport v. Roundpoint Mortgage Servicing, 668 F. App'x 659 (7th Cir. 2016)

Marvin Davenport v. Roundpoint Mortgage Servicing

Opinion

ORDER

Marvin and Judith Davenport defaulted on their mortgage, and their lender brought a foreclosure action against them in state court. The Davenports contested the action, alleging that foreclosure was improper because their lender and loan servicer had engaged in various unfair business practices. The ■ court issued a judgment of foreclosure and eventually approved the judicial sale of the property. The very next day, the Davenports filed this lawsuit in federal court — purportedly on the basis of diversity jurisdiction, see 28 U.S.C. § 1332 — in which they reiterated that the mortgage “was based on fraud therefore the foreclosure as well as the mortgage was null and voided.” In addition to damages, the Davenports sought “clear title to their property.” The district court dismissed the suit with prejudice, reasoning that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, see D.C. Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462, 103 S.Ct. 1303, 75 L.Ed.2d 206 (1983); Rooker v. Fid. Trust Co., 263 U.S. 413, 44 S.Ct. 149, 68 L.Ed. 362 (1923), precluded the exercise of federal subject-matter jurisdiction because the Davenports are not permitted to use the district court “as an appellate tribunal to review the state court foreclosure.”

The Davenports continue to insist, as they did to the district court, that the federal case is “irrelevant to the foreclosure case.” But the federal lawsuit sought to “clear title” to the foreclosed property and thus represented an improper collateral challenge to the state-court judgment. See Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284, 125 S.Ct. 1517, 161 L.Ed.2d 454 (2005); Crawford v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 647 F.3d 642, 645 (7th Cir. 2011); Taylor v. Fed. Nat’l Mortg. Ass’n, 374 F.3d 529, 532-33 (7th Cir. 2004). To the extent the Davenports hint that they seek damages for extrajudicial injuries that wouldn’t be barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, see Iq *660 bal v. Patel, 780 F.3d 728, 730 (7th Cir. 2015), they do not develop any meaningful argument that we can review. See Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A); Rahn v. Bd. of Trustees of N. Ill. Univ., 803 F.3d 285, 295 (7th Cir. 2015). They do not explain the significance, for example, of their scattershot references to statutes such as the Freedom of Information Act and the USA Patriot Act.

AFFIRMED.

Reference

Full Case Name
Marvin DAVENPORT and Judith Davenport, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ROUNDPOINT MORTGAGE SERVICING CORP., Et Al., Defendants-Appellees
Status
Unpublished