Poorsina v. Zhang

Background

Ali Poorsina, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a complaint concerning 1563 28th Avenue in San Francisco, California. He alleged that he had previously owned the property and lived there from 2005 to 2017, and that the property was sold in 2017 through a wrongful foreclosure. According to the complaint, Tan Tseng transferred the property to Xiaosong Zhang and Meng Li in March 2019. Zhang and Li then obtained a $1,640,000 Fannie Mae residential loan from Wells Fargo, secured by a security instrument identifying the 2018 Samuel Wang Revocable Trust.

Poorsina asserted a claim seeking cancellation of the security instrument and quiet title, along with a claim for punitive damages. He alleged that the defendants committed fraud and that Zhang and Li obtained the loan through a faulty application. He cited 28 U.S.C. § 2410 and California statutes as bases for federal jurisdiction.

Motions and jurisdictional analysis

Zhang and Li moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Wang also moved under Rule 12(b)(1), or alternatively under Rule 12(b)(6) for failure to state a legally valid claim. The court treated the jurisdictional challenge as a facial challenge, meaning it considered whether the complaint’s allegations and appropriate judicially noticeable materials established jurisdiction.

The court held that § 2410 does not itself give federal courts jurisdiction over quiet-title actions. Instead, the statute waives the United States’ sovereign immunity in certain actions involving property on which the United States has or claims a lien or mortgage. The court found that neither of the potential jurisdictional grounds discussed in the opinion applied here: the United States was not a defendant and had not removed the case, and the complaint did not allege a federal tax lien. The court also noted that the federal tax lien involved in an earlier related proceeding had already been adjudicated.

The court further found no federal-question jurisdiction because Poorsina did not assert a claim based on federal law or requiring interpretation of federal law. It found no diversity jurisdiction because the complaint listed a San Francisco address for Poorsina and alleged that the defendants resided in California.

Other rulings and disposition

The court denied the defendants’ requests for judicial notice as to the complaint and its attached exhibits because those documents were already part of the case record. It granted the requests as to docket sheets and public records. The court declined to decide whether materials Poorsina submitted with his opposition were suitable for judicial notice because they did not affect the jurisdictional issues.

The court found that amendment would be futile. Although courts generally give a self-represented plaintiff an opportunity to amend unless the defect cannot be cured, the court concluded that Poorsina’s filings did not identify legal or factual arguments showing that he could amend the complaint to establish subject-matter jurisdiction. The court therefore granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss, dismissed the complaint without leave to amend and without prejudice, and directed the clerk to enter judgment reflecting dismissal without prejudice. The court did not reach Wang’s alternative Rule 12(b)(6) arguments.