Waterman v. Fourth Lenox Terrace Associates LLC

Background

Rory Waterman and Marniqua Tompkins, proceeding without lawyers, filed a federal lawsuit challenging eviction proceedings that had occurred in state court. They sued Fourth Lenox Terrace Associates LLC, the landlord’s lawyers, and Hon. Eleanora Ofshtein, Hon. Lynn Kotler, Hon. Tracey Ferdinand, Shane Delaney, Kathleen Nolan, Solomon Choutcha, and Sean Zvi. They also filed emergency motions seeking to stop their eviction. The court previously denied those motions because the private defendants had not acted under state authority as required for a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and because the judicial defendants were protected by judicial immunity.

The plaintiffs then filed an amended complaint and motions for reconsideration and an emergency hearing. The amended complaint named each judicial defendant and said the judges were being sued in their official capacities for declaratory relief and prospective injunctive relief under the exception recognized in Ex parte Young.

Court’s analysis

The court said naming the judicial defendants did not change its earlier analysis concerning the landlord and its lawyers. Although judicial immunity does not bar the specific forms of relief the plaintiffs requested, the claims against the judicial defendants were barred by sovereign immunity.

For declaratory relief, the court explained that the Eleventh Amendment generally prevents federal courts from issuing declarations against state officials for past violations of federal law. The plaintiffs’ requested declaration concerned the judges’ past conduct in state-court proceedings that had already ended, so the request was barred.

The court also held that sovereign immunity barred the requested injunction. The narrow exception allowing some lawsuits against state officials to stop ongoing violations of federal law generally does not allow federal courts to issue injunctions against state-court judges or clerks, because judges do not enforce state laws in the relevant sense. The court characterized the plaintiffs’ request to prevent further enforcement of allegedly defective judgments as an improper collateral attack on the state-court proceedings. It said challenges to constitutional errors by state judges should proceed through appeals, ultimately potentially to the United States Supreme Court.

Disposition

The court denied the motions for reconsideration and for an emergency hearing. The clerk was directed to terminate the motions at Dkts. 18 and 19. The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and therefore denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees.