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Civil Procedure; Rooker-Feldman doctrine

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//March 2, 2015//

Civil Procedure; Rooker-Feldman doctrine

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//March 2, 2015//

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U.S. Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Civil Procedure; Rooker-Feldman doctrine

A previous state court foreclosure action does not preclude a federal RICO action based on activity the plaintiff alleges predates the state court action.

“Iqbal alleges that the defendants conducted a racketeering enterprise that predates the state court’s judgments. He cannot have those judgments annulled but can contend that he was injured, out of court, by being ‘set up’ by Patel and Johnson so that they could take over his business and reap the profits he anticipated. The district court believed that any pre-litigation fraud is ‘intertwined’ with the state court judgments and therefore forecloses federal litigation, but Exxon Mobil shows that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine asks what injury the plaintiff asks the federal court to redress, not whether the injury is ‘intertwined’ with something else. See 544 U.S. at 291; see also Richardson v. Koch Law Firm, P.C., 768 F.3d 732, 734 (7th Cir. 2014) (deprecating any inquiry into what is intertwined with what).”

“Because Iqbal seeks damages for activity that (he alleges) predates the state litigation and caused injury independently of it, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine does not block this suit. It must be reinstated.”

Reversed and Remanded.

14-1959 Iqbal v. Patel

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Moody, J., Easterbrook, J.

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