In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-3135
L. V. C RAWFORD and Y VETTE C RAWFORD ,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
C OUNTRYWIDE H OME L OANS,
INCORPORATED , doing business as
A MERICA’S W HOLESALE L ENDER, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.
No. 3:09CV247—Philip P. Simon, Chief Judge.
A RGUED A PRIL 12, 2011—D ECIDED JULY 21, 2011
Before K ANNE and E VANS, Circuit Judges, and C LEVERT,
District Judge.
The Honorable Charles N. Clevert, Chief Judge of the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wis-
consin, sitting by designation.
2 No. 10-3135
K ANNE, Circuit Judge. Yvette and L.V. Crawford were
evicted from their home by sheriff’s deputies enforcing
a state court foreclosure judgment. Their mortgagee,
Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., had obtained the judg-
ment after the Crawfords defaulted on their mortgage.
The Crawfords sought relief in federal court, naming
Countrywide, their foreclosure suit counsel, their county
sheriff, and their county board of commissioners in a
slipshod complaint that spanned twenty-two counts. On
various motions, the district court dismissed two defen-
dants, declined to allow the addition of two others, dis-
missed two claims for want of subject matter juris-
diction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, and ultimately
entered summary judgment in favor of the remaining
defendant. We affirm.
I. B ACKGROUND
Countrywide originated a mortgage loan to the
Crawfords, an African-American couple, in 2001. They
used the loan to purchase a home in La Porte,
Indiana, where they lived until employment difficulties
and mounting medical bills relating to their physical
disabilities caused them to fall behind in their mortgage
payments. Fearing foreclosure, they agreed to pay
$995 to Foreclosure Solutions in exchange for its help in
reaching a renegotiation deal with their mortgagee.
Countrywide did not renegotiate the loan’s terms and
instead initiated a foreclosure proceeding in La Porte
County Circuit Court. Foreclosure Solutions informed
the Crawfords that it had hired attorney Gary Dilk to
No. 10-3135 3
represent them in the proceedings. Dilk entered an ap-
pearance in the suit, but he never contacted them and
did not resist Countrywide’s motion for summary judg-
ment; the record indicates that neither Foreclosure Solu-
tions nor Dilk ever did anything else on the Crawfords’
behalf. The state court entered a foreclosure judg-
ment in the mortgagee’s favor on August 4, 2006. The
Crawfords moved for relief from the foreclosure judg-
ment on August 2, 2007, but the state court denied their
motion.
A sheriff’s sale of the home occurred on December 13,
2006. Mortgage company Fannie Mae purchased the
property, but it continued to use Countrywide to service
it. Shortly after the Crawfords’ motion for relief was
denied, Fannie Mae moved for a writ of assistance to
evict the Crawfords and take possession of its property.
The writ of assistance issued on June 25, 2008, but the
Crawfords convinced the La Porte circuit court to stay
their eviction during their appeal of the court’s denial of
their motion for relief from the foreclosure judgment.
That stay was conditioned, however, upon the Craw-
fords’ monthly payment of $1,200 into a court-adminis-
tered escrow account. When the Crawfords did not
make full payment in October 2008, the writ of
assistance became immediately effective. In November
2008, Countrywide filed a notice that it intended to
evict the Crawfords pursuant to the writ of assistance.
An unidentified man appeared at the Crawfords’ home
twice in May 2009, claiming to be from the La Porte
County Sheriff’s Department (though he was not in
4 No. 10-3135
uniform). He told them both times that he would return
with uniformed deputies to evict them around the end
of the month. On May 27, 2009, La Porte County Sheriff’s
Deputies arrived at the Crawfords’ home and ordered
them to depart in compliance with the court’s orders.
The deputies had a barking dog with them, and they
allegedly threatened to release the dog into the house,
though their reasons for doing so do not appear in
the record. The Crawfords complied and departed the
home.
The Crawfords subsequently filed nearly simultaneous
suits in the La Porte Circuit Court and in the United
States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
The substantially identical suits named Countrywide,
the La Porte County Board of Commissioners, La Porte
County Sheriff Michael Mollenhauer, attorney Gary
Dilk, and a John Doe as defendants. The defendants
removed the state court action to the federal district
court, the two cases were effectively consolidated, and
the district court administratively closed the original
federal action. Dilk, Sheriff Mollenhauer, and the Com-
missioners moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). The district court granted
their motions on February 12, 2010. In the same order,
it also dismissed the John Doe defendant on procedural
grounds and denied the Crawfords’ motion to add Fore-
closure Solutions and the Bank of America as addi-
tional defendants.
No. 10-3135 5
Countrywide, the sole remaining defendant,1 then
moved for summary judgment on all of the Crawfords’
claims. In opposition, the Crawfords moved the court
both to continue the proceedings pending additional
discovery and also to judicially notice a wealth of mate-
rials. The district court denied the Crawfords’ motions,
dismissed aspects of two of their claims as jurisdictionally
barred under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, and entered
summary judgment in favor of Countrywide on each of
the remaining claims.
The Crawfords timely appealed the district court’s
final judgment. They later filed a motion asking this
court to take judicial notice of materials similar to
those presented to the district court pertaining to the
practice of “robo-signing” by mortgagees and national
economic conditions. We denied their motion by our
order of December 9, 2010.2
1
Four times in the Appellants’ Brief, counsel refers to
actions taken by “Wells Fargo.” We presume counsel meant
to refer to Countrywide.
2
Despite this ruling, the Crawfords continue to argue in
their reply brief that we must take judicial notice of their
proffered materials. We decline to reconsider our ruling, even
though they have enticed us with additional—though still
wholly irrelevant—materials purporting to show a fore-
closure crisis and Countrywide’s predatory lending practices.
6 No. 10-3135
II. A NALYSIS
The Crawfords present four issues on appeal. We
will take up their jurisdictional issue first to demon-
strate that this case is properly before us. We will then
consider the propriety of the district court’s entry of
summary judgment before evaluating its dismissal of
two defendants due to the Crawfords’ failure to state
claims against them. Finally, we will briefly address
the district court’s denial of the Crawfords’ motion to
add a defendant.
A. Subject Matter Jurisdiction
The Crawfords first ask this court to review whether
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine divested the district court
of subject matter jurisdiction. We must satisfy ourselves
at the outset that we have jurisdiction over this appeal,
even though all parties argue that we do and that the
doctrine does not apply. See Gen. Ins. Co. of Am. v. Clark
Mall Corp., ___ F.3d ___, ___, 2011 WL 1663374, at *3 (7th
Cir. May 4, 2011).
The Rooker-Feldman doctrine is jurisdictional in nature.
Freedom Mortg. Corp. v. Burnham Mortg., Inc., 569 F.3d 667,
670 (7th Cir. 2009). It prevents lower federal courts from
reviewing state-court judgments, over which only
the United States Supreme Court has federal appellate
jurisdiction. Skinner v. Switzer, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 131 S. Ct.
1289, 1297 (2011). It is a “narrow doctrine, confined to
cases brought by state-court losers complaining of
injuries caused by state-court judgments rendered before
the district court proceedings commenced and inviting
No. 10-3135 7
district court review and rejection of those judgments.”
Kelly v. Med-1 Solutions, LLC, 548 F.3d 600, 603 (7th Cir.
2008) (quoting Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 464 (2006)).
The doctrine does not prevent state-court losers from
presenting independent claims to a federal district
court, even if the new claims involve questions related
to those in the original state court proceedings. Skinner,
131 S. Ct. at 1297.
The district court correctly considered the Rooker-
Feldman doctrine sua sponte, see Carter v. AMC, LLC, ___
F.3d ___, ___, 2011 WL 1812524, at *1 (7th Cir. May 13,
2011), and it concluded that the doctrine applied to
only two of the Crawfords’ twenty-two claims. It deter-
mined that their first claim—that Countrywide’s fore-
closure and eviction deprived them of their funda-
mental fairness and equal protection rights—required
dismissal to the extent the Crawfords complained of
injury caused by the state-court judgment of foreclosure,
as opposed to injury caused by the defendants’ actions
in enforcing the judgment.3 See Taylor v. Fed. Nat’l Mortg.
Ass’n, 374 F.3d 529, 532 (7th Cir. 2004) (holding that
requesting recovery of a foreclosed-upon home is “tanta-
mount to a request to vacate the state court’s judgment
of foreclosure” and that such relief is barred by the
3
It dismissed the aspects of the claim only to the extent that
the doctrine operated to divest it of jurisdiction. See Crawford
v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., et al., 2010 WL 3273715, at *5
(N.D. Ind. Aug. 16, 2010) (“[S]ome of the Crawfords’ claims
constitute in essence a challenge to the outcome of the state
court foreclosure proceedings, and to that extent they are
barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine . . . .”).
8 No. 10-3135
Rooker-Feldman doctrine). The district court construed
the obtuse ninth claim—seeking a declaratory judgment
that the defendants were not entitled to recover on quasi-
contractual theories—as presenting belated defenses
to Countrywide’s foreclosure complaint, the considera-
tion of which would also be barred by the doctrine. Ac-
cordingly, it found dismissal to be appropriate for
the jurisdictionally barred aspects of these two claims.
We review the district court’s determination of its
subject matter jurisdiction in light of the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine de novo. Kelly, 548 F.3d at 603-04. “In applying
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the immediate inquiry is
whether the federal plaintiff seeks to set aside a state
court judgment or whether he is, in fact, presenting an
independent claim.” Taylor, 374 F.3d at 532 (quotation
marks omitted). The Crawfords’ briefs do nothing to
clarify exactly what relief the Crawfords sought in their
complaint—specifically, whether reversal of the state
court judgment of foreclosure was a necessary part of
that relief and, if so, to which claims that relief per-
tained. They argue only that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine
is over-applied by district courts and therefore should
not have been found to preclude jurisdiction below. But
the Supreme Court’s general admonitions regarding fre-
quent and inappropriate application of the Rooker-Feldman
doctrine, see, e.g., Skinner, 131 S. Ct. at 1297, shed no light
on its application given the procedural posture and facts
of the Crawfords’ particular case. Indeed, their briefs do
not even mention the dismissal of two of their claims,
let alone explain why dismissal was erroneous. Their
opposition to the dismissals is therefore waived.
See Mahaffey v. Ramos, 588 F.3d 1142, 1146 (7th Cir. 2009).
No. 10-3135 9
Regardless, we are convinced that the district
court properly applied the Rooker-Feldman doctrine in con-
sidering the first and ninth claims. “To determine
whether Rooker-Feldman bars a claim, we look beyond
the four corners of the complaint to discern the actual
injury claimed by the plaintiff.” Johnson v. Orr, 551 F.3d
564, 568 (7th Cir. 2008). The Crawfords’ injury in claims
one and nine—the foreclosure of their mortgage—was
effectuated by the state court’s judgment. At oral argu-
ment, the Crawfords’ counsel was pointedly asked,
“Aren’t you really attacking the state court proceeding?”
He responded, “That is certainly part of what we were
doing, Your Honor. And that’s why I think there is a
Rooker-Feldman issue that has to be addressed. We are
attacking both the lower court—the state trial
court—judgment as well as the manner in which that
judgment was enforced . . . .” Given this concession, we
have no trouble concluding that the dismissed claims
were “of the kind from which the doctrine acquired its
name: cases brought by state-court losers . . . inviting
district court review and rejection of [the state court’s]
judgments.” Skinner, 131 S. Ct. at 1297 (quoting Exxon
Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284
(2005)). As such, the district court did not err in dis-
missing those aspects of the Crawfords’ complaint as
jurisdictionally barred under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.4
4
After finding dismissal to be appropriate, the district court
analyzed the merits of the two claims in the alternative. It
determined that, if it was incorrect regarding Rooker-Feldman,
summary judgment in Countrywide’s favor would have been
(continued...)
10 No. 10-3135
We next consider whether the district court had
subject matter jurisdiction for the twenty remaining
claims. None of those claims cogently attacks the under-
lying state-court judgment. To the extent that any claim
alleged an independent ground for relief, relief could
be granted without necessarily impugning the state
court’s judgment. See Remer v. Burlington Area Sch. Dist.,
205 F.3d 990, 998 (7th Cir. 2000) (Rooker-Feldman doctrine
not implicated where district court “would be free to
fashion relief that would not contradict the state circuit
court’s injunction”); TruServ Corp. v. Flegles, Inc., 419
F.3d 584, 591 (7th Cir. 2005). These claims may involve
facts or questions relevant in the original state-court
action, but because the claims were neither decided
in the state court nor inextricably intertwined with its
judgment, the Rooker-Feldman doctrine did not divest
the district court of jurisdiction to consider their merits.
Skinner, 131 S. Ct. at 1297; Kelly, 548 F.3d at 603. Accord-
ingly, the district court did not err in considering
the Crawfords’ remaining claims.
B. Summary Judgment
The district court granted summary judgment in
Countrywide’s favor on all remaining counts. The
Crawfords contend that summary judgment was inap-
4
(...continued)
appropriate on the first and ninth claims. For the sake of
completeness, we likewise note that the district court’s alter-
native analyses were appropriate and correct.
No. 10-3135 11
propriate for two reasons: the district court applied
an incorrect standard, and issues of material fact per-
sisted. We review the district court’s entry of sum-
mary judgment de novo. Estate of Davis v. Wells Fargo
Bank, 633 F.3d 529, 539 (7th Cir. 2011).
1. Summary Judgment Standard
“The court shall grant summary judgment if the
movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any
material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as
a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). When Country-
wide’s motion for summary judgment adequately chal-
lenged the elements of their claims, the Crawfords as-
sumed the burden to identify specific facts in the
record that demonstrated a genuine issue for trial. Estate
of Davis, 633 F.3d at 539. The Crawfords protest that
burden, however. They argue that Countrywide’s
materials in support of its motion were insufficient to
foreclose the possibility that there were disputes of mate-
rial fact, so no burden to produce supportive evidence
fell to them.
The Crawfords’ argument arises from their misapplica-
tion of Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144 (1970).
Adickes involved a white woman who was refused
service at a Hattiesburg, Mississippi, restaurant she
entered with black companions in 1964. Id. at 146. She
sued the restaurant under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that
its refusal to serve her and her subsequent arrest for dis-
turbing the peace resulted from a conspiracy between
12 No. 10-3135
the restaurant and local police. Id. at 148. The Supreme
Court reversed a grant of summary judgment in favor
of the restaurant because the restaurant “failed to carry
its burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue
of fact.” Id. at 153. Specifically, it did not meet its burden
“to foreclose the possibility that there was a policeman
in the Kress store while petitioner was awaiting service,
and that this policeman reached an understanding with
some Kress employee that petitioner not be served.” Id.
at 157 (emphasis added). Seizing on the italicized
language, the Crawfords suggest that Adickes stands for
the proposition that no party is entitled to summary
judgment unless the movant wholly extinguishes the
possibility that the events forming the basis of his oppo-
nent’s claims occurred.
A party moving for summary judgment need not intro-
duce evidence rendering its opponents’ claims altogether
impossible in order to trigger the opponent’s burden to
answer with its own supporting evidence. See Celotex
Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323 (1986). Indeed, Celotex
flatly contradicts the Crawfords’ interpretation of Adickes:
[W]e do not think the Adickes language . . . should
be construed to mean that the burden is on the
party moving for summary judgment to produce
evidence showing the absence of a genuine issue
of material fact, even with respect to an issue
on which the nonmoving party bears the burden
of proof. Instead, as we have explained, the
burden on the moving party may be discharged
by “showing”—that is, pointing out to the district
No. 10-3135 13
court—that there is an absence of evidence to
support the nonmoving party’s case.
Id. at 325. Countrywide’s summary judgment motion
comprehensively challenged the factual support and
legal soundness of the Crawfords’ myriad claims, and
Countrywide filed a statement of material facts it alleged
were not in dispute. The Crawfords thus acquired the
burden to introduce affidavits or cite evidence in the
record demonstrating what genuine issues remained
for trial. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(e) (2009); N.D. Ind. L.R. 56.1(a)
(2009); Eberts v. Goderstad, 569 F.3d 757, 767 (7th Cir.
2009). The Crawfords did not meet that obligation.
They instead submitted a statement alleging predatory
lending practices by Countrywide, never addressing
Countrywide’s proposed facts. Under the court’s local
rules—and as contemplated by Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(e)—the
district court appropriately took Countrywide’s stated
facts to be undisputed. It then considered which, if
either, party was entitled to judgment as a matter of law
given those facts. We conclude that the district court
thus employed the proper standard for summary judg-
ment.
2. Issues of Material Fact
The Crawfords appear to contend that, even if the
district court articulated the correct standard, the district
court erred in applying that standard in two ways. First,
it denied their motions to strike portions of an affidavit
submitted by Countrywide, to allow additional dis-
covery, and to take judicial notice of proffered materials.
14 No. 10-3135
Second, their submitted materials showed that genuine
disputes of material fact remained. Neither contention
has merit, and both are perfunctory and undeveloped.
The district court declined to strike from a Countrywide
employee’s affidavit, submitted in support of summary
judgment, an allegedly conclusory portion stating
that neither the Crawfords’ race nor their disabilities
factored into Countrywide’s actions against them. In
arguing that the district court should have stricken
the statement as a legal conclusion lacking adequate
foundation and that the district court erroneously relied
on it in granting summary judgment, the Crawfords
do not address the district court’s actual rationale for
denying their motion. It had determined that striking
the statement was unnecessary because the Crawfords
neither moved to strike nor challenged with opposing
evidence another of the affiant’s statements: “Countrywide
has taken all of the foregoing and other relevant actions
against the Crawfords because of the Crawfords’ default
under the loan documents and failure to make the pay-
ments as required to stay enforcement of the judg-
ment.” 5 The district court found that this unchallenged
assertion—in light of the fact that the Crawfords
“offered no evidence at all of discriminatory motive in
Countrywide’s decisions,” Crawford, 2010 WL 3273715,
5
On appeal, the Crawfords claim they moved to strike this
portion of the affidavit as well. (Appellants’ Br. at 13.)
That claim is not correct. Their motion to strike pertained
only to the statement regarding race and disability. (R. at 524.)
No. 10-3135 15
at *4—would defeat the Crawfords’ claims of unlawful
discrimination. The Crawfords leave this reasoning
unaddressed on appeal, and we find that the district
court did not err in denying the motion to strike.
The Crawfords also take issue with the district court’s
denial of their motion to delay its consideration of sum-
mary judgment to allow them additional time to con-
duct discovery as allowed by Rule 56. We review orders
denying discovery requests for an abuse of discretion,
Little Co. of Mary Hosp. v. Sebelius, 587 F.3d 849, 856 (7th
Cir. 2009), and appellants must demonstrate prejudice
from the denial in order to secure relief from the
district court’s order on appeal, Walker v. Mueller Indus.,
Inc., 408 F.3d 328, 334 (7th Cir. 2005). The Crawfords
present no argument as to why the denial was either
an abuse of discretion or prejudicial; they only state
the truism that Rule 56 would have allowed the district
court to grant their motion. They have thus waived their
discovery request argument. See Gross v. Town of Cicero,
Ill., 619 F.3d 697, 704-05 (7th Cir. 2010).
The district court also denied the Crawfords’ motion to
take judicial notice of materials—a settlement, lawsuits,
pending enforcement actions between state attorneys
general and Countrywide, websites, news articles, a
press release, a speech, and position papers—they
offered to show Countrywide’s predatory lending prac-
tices. We review the district court’s refusal to take
judicial notice of proffered materials for an abuse of
discretion. Waid v. Merrill Area Pub. Sch., 130 F.3d 1268,
1272 (7th Cir. 1997). The district court found that the
16 No. 10-3135
materials were not of the type of which it could take
judicial notice under Rule 201(b) of the Federal Rules
of Evidence. It noted that the Crawfords sought “judicial
notice not of particular discrete facts, but of a number
of whole documents” and asked why this would be “a
matter of judicial notice and not more generally the
admissibility of the documents they have identified.”
Crawford, 2010 WL 3273715, at *4. In keeping with their
pattern throughout this appeal, the Crawfords do not
address either of these salient points. They correctly note
that courts have occasionally considered particular eco-
nomic and social conditions without the admission of
evidence on those points. See, e.g., Garner v. Louisiana,
368 U.S. 157, 195-96 (1961) (collecting cases). But these
examples in no way indicate that courts must take
judicial notice of a universe of litigation actions and
articles when a party offers that universe without a
careful delineation of the facts to be noticed. We deem
their undeveloped argument regarding judicial notice
waived. See Gross, 619 F.3d at 704-05.
The Crawfords’ final challenge to the summary judg-
ment order is that they demonstrated disputes of
material fact, thus precluding summary judgment. But
just what facts they allege to be disputed—and how
those facts are material—is a mystery unresolved by their
opening brief. Like their response to Countrywide’s
summary judgment motion, their briefs in this court
are “long on generalities on the subject of predatory
lending and about the unfairness of their treatment, but
short on . . . analysis of their particular claims.” Crawford,
2010 WL 3273715, at *5. Not a single line of their briefs
No. 10-3135 17
specifically addressed any of their individual claims,
let alone refuted the district court’s persuasive sixteen-
page analysis that cogently addressed the facts and law
of each individual claim in depth.
The Crawfords did not meet their burden to come
forward with specific facts showing that there were
genuine issues for trial. See Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v.
Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986). On appeal, they
still identify only three categories of facts in the affidavit
they submitted in opposition to summary judgment:
“(1) the events which ensnared them in the Countrywide
web; (2) the bungling of Foreclosure Solutions and
attorney Gary Dilk . . . and; (3) the eviction from their
home by police officers using a dog to frighten an
older African-American woman with disabilities whose
husband was at work.” (Appellants’ Br. at 14.) The first
category pertains to their allegations of predatory lending
and does not relate “specific facts.” The district court
correctly determined that the affidavit’s allegations
within this category were not material. The second
and third categories pertain only to defendants
the district court had dismissed before the summary
judgment stage, so those allegations likewise could not
have been material.
A genuine dispute of material fact exists only when
the evidence could support a reasonable jury’s verdict
for the non-moving party. Spivey v. Adaptive Mktg. LLC,
622 F.3d 816, 822 (7th Cir. 2010). The district court ably
demonstrated that the evidence before it—even when
crediting the affidavit the Crawfords’ submitted in op-
18 No. 10-3135
position to the summary judgment motion—simply
could not support a verdict in the Crawfords’ favor on
any of their claims. In its claim-by-claim analysis, the
district court noted that there was no evidence of the
elements for some claims and that other indi-
vidual “claims” did not state independently cognizable
causes of action. As the Crawfords do not argue against
any of the district court’s convincing reasoning on any
specific claim, we have no reason to conclude that the
district court erred in granting summary judgment.
C. Dismissal of Claims Against Individual Defendants
We turn next to the dismissal of the Crawfords’ claims
against the La Porte County Sheriff and their foreclosure
attorney. 6 To survive the defendants’ Rule 12(b)(6) mo-
tions, the Crawfords’ second amended complaint must
have stated sufficient facts to render their claims against
the sheriff and the attorney complete and plausible. See
Estate of Davis, 633 F.3d at 533. Our review is somewhat
confounded by the Crawfords’ complaint, which the
district court accurately described as a “legal morass”
because its claims lacked any explanation of what facts
formed the bases for relief under the legal theories in-
voked. Crawford v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., 2010 WL
597942, at *2 (N.D. Ind. Feb. 12, 2010). Nevertheless, we
construe the complaint in the light most favorable to
6
The Crawfords have not appealed the dismissal of the
John Doe defendant or the La Porte County Board of Commis-
sioners.
No. 10-3135 19
the Crawfords and review the district court’s dismissal
of the claims against Sheriff Mollenhauer and attorney
Dilk de novo. Active Disposal, Inc. v. City of Darien, 635
F.3d 883, 886 (7th Cir. 2011).
1. Sheriff Mollenhauer
The district court granted Sheriff Mollenhauer’s
motion to dismiss for a variety of reasons. While the
Crawfords, in opposition to the motion, suggested that
the Sheriff’s Department discriminated against them
based on their disabilities, they never identified even
one of the twenty-two claims to which that suggestion
pertained. And though the Crawfords suggested that
their pleading at a minimum stated a claim for excessive
force in the eviction method, the complaint never
referred to or alleged excessive force. Other claims that
they argued implicated the Sheriff named only the
lenders, consisted of a bald and unexplained assertion
that all defendants violated the due course of law, or
could not support the Sheriff’s liability as a matter of law.
In their brief to this court, the Crawfords do not
address the district court’s reasons for its judgment.
Rather, in two scant sentences they contend that their
allegations met the plausibility standard and that the
Sheriff was on notice that he violated “specified” statutes
(without specifying which statutes were supposedly
violated). We find the district court’s reasons to have
been sound. None of the Crawfords’ claims applies any
facts to its cause of action to suggest how the Sheriff could
20 No. 10-3135
conceivably, let alone plausibly, be liable.7 See Ashcroft
v. Iqbal, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009).
2. Attorney Dilk
In response to Dilk’s motion to dismiss, the Crawfords
clarified which nine claims implicated their erstwhile
attorney. The district court evaluated each claim in
detail and correctly noted that it did not need to accept
as true the Crawfords’ conclusory allegations that consti-
tuted mere threadbare recitals of the elements of their
myriad claims. See Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949. It discussed
each claim in detail and ultimately concluded that
“[e]ach and every one of the nine claims the Crawfords
now clarify they assert against Dilk is . . . nothing
more than captious and meritless.” Crawford, 2010 WL
597942, at *3.
On appeal, the Crawfords again do not address
the district court’s reasoning on any individual claim.
Rather, they argue that their complaint set forth a claim
against their former attorney for breaching a contract
of which they were the intended beneficiaries (though
7
As just one example, paragraph 39 of the complaint reads (in
its entirety), “As a Fourteenth Claim, all Defendants have
breached contracts of which the Crawfords are intended third-
party beneficiaries.” No mention is made of what contracts
were breached, and no facts regarding any contract were
pled. Neither did the Crawfords describe how a county sheriff
could have breached any contract in the course of his official
duties.
No. 10-3135 21
they do not identify the contract at issue). Dilk’s
abortive representation of them in the state foreclosure
action, they allege, led to the default judgment of fore-
closure and to the litany of harms that followed. They
therefore argue that Dilk was “on notice that his
alleged failures contributed to the civil rights violations
suffered by the Crawfords.” (Appellants’ Br. at 16.) Be-
cause these statements neither address nor undermine
the district court’s analysis, we see no indication of error
in its granting Dilk’s motion to dismiss.8
D. Denial of Leave to Add Defendants
The Crawfords’ fourth and final claim deserves little
attention. They moved to add Bank of America, a once-
removed parent organization to Countrywide, as an-
other defendant. The proposed addition to the second
amended complaint required leave of the district court,
see Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(2), and the district court denied
their motion.9 We review that decision for an abuse of
discretion. Foster v. DeLuca, 545 F.3d 582, 583 (7th Cir.
2008). The district court had broad discretion regarding
leave to add defendants, especially in light of the patent
futility of the Crawfords’ motion and their repeated
8
The Crawfords did plead facts that suggest they may have
viable claims of malpractice or fraud against Dilk and Fore-
closure Solutions, but they did not present those causes of
action in this case.
9
The Crawfords have not appealed the denial of their
motion to add Foreclosure Solutions as a defendant.
22 No. 10-3135
failure to cure deficiencies in their pleadings. See Hukic
v. Aurora Loan Servs., 588 F.3d 420, 432 (7th Cir. 2009).
The district court noted that the Crawfords neither
made any direct allegations against Bank of America
nor argued that Countrywide was a mere alter ego of
Bank of America so as to pierce liability protection
offered by their separate corporate structure. On appeal,
the Crawfords devote many pages to proving that a
merger occurred, but not a single line to arguing why
that alone renders the district court’s denial abusive.
We find the district court’s reasoning sound and con-
clude that it did not err in denying the Crawfords’
motion to add Bank of America as a defendant.
III. C ONCLUSION
Because we find no error in the district court’s deter-
minations, we A FFIRM its judgments in all respects. How-
ever, we V ACATE the district court’s order of August 10,
2010, and R EMAND the case for the limited purpose
of permitting the district court to enter a new order
specifying which aspects of the Crawfords’ complaint
were dismissed on jurisdictional grounds and remanding
those aspects to the state court from which the case
was removed.
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