Numinutitska Penatekawa Tribal Trust v. Nationstar Mortgage LLC
Numinutitska Penatekawa Tribal Trust v. Nationstar Mortgage LLC, d/b/a Mr. Cooper
- William Orrick
- 3:23-cv-05162
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Numinutitska Penatekawa Tribal Trust v. Nationstar Mortgage, Judge Orrick granted dismissal with prejudice because prior orders and judicial estoppel barred the claims.
The plaintiffs’ claims were dismissed with prejudice, including claims involving Nationstar Mortgage LLC, ServiceLink Title Company, Fidelity National Title Company, and any remaining unserved defendants identified in the complaint.
What happened
Numinutitska Penatekawa Tribal Trust v. Nationstar Mortgage LLC, d/b/a Mr. Cooper, involved claims concerning a mortgage, foreclosure, and a property previously addressed in related litigation. The court said the new complaint was confusing and unclear and appeared to reframe the same issues as tribal-law claims.
The court explained that an earlier order barred similar filings without prefiling review and that the case avoided that review because defendants removed it from state court. The court also said the claims were barred by judicial estoppel because they had not been disclosed in bankruptcy proceedings.
Judge William Orrick granted the defendants’ motions to dismiss with prejudice because amendment would be futile. He also dismissed with prejudice any remaining case against other defendants who had not been served or were not the subject of understandable, nonfrivolous allegations.
The detailed version
- Numinutitska Penatekawa Tribal Trust v. Nationstar Mortgage LLC · No. 3:23-cv-05162
- William Orrick
- Nov. 7, 2023
Background
Numinutitska Penatekawa Tribal Trust and Wanag Tahatan-Bey Absolutee Trustee filed the case. The complaint concerned the same property and mortgage- and foreclosure-related issues addressed in earlier related proceedings. The court said the complaint was confusing and unclear, and that it appeared to reframe those issues as matters of tribal law.
In a prior related proceeding, the court had found that similar claims were barred by judicial estoppel—a rule that can prevent a party from taking a position inconsistent with one previously omitted from a court proceeding—because the claims had not been disclosed to the bankruptcy court. The court had also found that the earlier complaint failed to state a plausible claim.
The court further explained that a previous vexatious-litigant order required prefiling certification before an action could be filed in that court against certain defendants concerning the property. The order applied regardless of the name used to file the complaint and included Wanag Tahatan-Bey. This case did not receive that prefiling review because it was initially filed in state court and then removed to federal court. The court said that, if reviewed beforehand, it would have been dismissed as frivolous.
Ruling
The court held that reframing the same issues as tribal-law claims did not avoid the prior orders or the judicial-estoppel ruling. It stated that the same judicial-estoppel analysis applied to claims against new defendants, including ServiceLink Title Company and Fidelity National Title Company, because those matters also should have been disclosed in the bankruptcy proceedings.
The court granted the motions to dismiss with prejudice because amendment would be futile. It separately dismissed with prejudice any remaining case against defendants who had not been served or who were not the subject of comprehensible or nonfrivolous allegations. Judge William Orrick also vacated the scheduled hearing because he found the matter suitable for decision without oral argument.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.