Hahn v. New Jersey

PHILIP E. HAHN, Plaintiff, v. THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY, et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No.: 11-1874 (ES)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY

Dated: March 12, 2012

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

OPINION

SALAS, District Judge

I. Introduction

Before the Court are eleven motions to dismiss Plaintiff's Amended Complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6). Also pending before the Court are four motions for sanctions pursuant to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Court has considered the parties' submissions in support of and in opposition to the instant motions, and decides the matters without oral argument pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 78(b). For the reasons set forth below, Defendants' motions to dismiss are granted with prejudice; however, Defendants' motions for the imposition of Rule 11 sanctions are denied.

II. Jurisdiction

This Court has jurisdiction over this matter pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and 1343(a)(3), as well as 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

III. Background

Plaintiff has filed a litany of state court actions, the majority—if not all—of which have been dismissed with prejudice. Based upon those dismissals, Plaintiff now seeks relief from the federal courts. Plaintiff claims that the Defendants have violated his "individual andassociational rights under the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment [sic] to the United States Constitution," and seeks relief under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985 and 1986. (Am. Compl. at 3, ¶ 1).¹ While Plaintiff's Amended Complaint is essentially devoid of factual allegations, the crux of Plaintiff's Amended Complaint can be summarized as follows: "I have demanded a jury trial . . . . As a result the court does not have jurisdiction to dismiss the action. That is it. Game over. I get a jury trial. I will not agree to anything else." (Docket Entry No. 58 at 1).

This general allegation has led to the present action, wherein Plaintiff seeks redress from, among others,² attorneys who filed—and argued—motions seeking dismissal of Plaintiff's state court complaints; the trial court judges who—upon reviewing the motions and hearing argument—dismissed Plaintiff's complaints; the appellate division judges who affirmed the trial court judges' decisions dismissing Plaintiff's claims; and the Supreme Court justices who subsequently denied Plaintiff's petitions for certification.

IV. Legal Standards

A. Motion to Dismiss Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1)

A motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) challenges the existence of a federal court's subject matter jurisdiction. "When subject matter jurisdiction is challenged under Rule12(b)(1), the plaintiff must bear the burden of persuasion." Symczyk v. Genesis HealthCare Corp., 656 F.3d 189, 191 n.4 (3d Cir. 2011). In considering a Rule 12(b)(1) motion, "the district court may not presume the truthfulness of plaintiff's allegations, but rather must evaluat[e] for itself the merits of [the] jurisdictional claims." Hedges v. United States, 404 F.3d 744, 750 (3d Cir. 2005) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted).

B. Motion to Dismiss Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6)

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2) requires a complaint to set forth "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that a pleader is entitled to relief." The pleading standard announced by Rule 8 does not require detailed factual allegations; it does, however, demand "more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. 1937, 1949 (2009) (internal citation omitted). In addition, the plaintiff's short and plain statement of the claim must "give the defendants fair notice of what the . . . claim is and the grounds upon which it rests." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 545 (2007).

For a complaint to survive dismissal, it "must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, 'to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'" Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949 (citing Twombly, 550 U.S. at 570). A claim has facial plausibility when "the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Ibid. (internal citation omitted).

In evaluating the sufficiency of a complaint, a court must accept all well-pleaded factual allegations contained in the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. See Phillips v. Cnty. of Allegheny, 515 F.3d 224, 234 (3d Cir. 2008). But, "the tenet that a court must accept as true all of the allegations contained in a complaint is inapplicable to legal conclusions," and "[a] pleading that offers 'labels and conclusions' or a'formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.'" Iqbal, 129 S. Ct. at 1949 (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). Furthermore, "[when] deciding a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a court must consider only the complaint, exhibits attached [thereto], matters of the public record, as well as undisputedly authentic documents if the complainant's claims are based upon these documents." Mayer v. Belichick, 605 F.3d 223, 230 (3d Cir. 2011).

"[I]f a complaint is subject to a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal, a district court must permit a curative amendment unless such an amendment would be inequitable or futile." Phillips, 515 F.3d at 245; see also Ray v. First Nat'l Bank of Omaha, 413 F. App'x 427, 430 (3d Cir. 2011) ("A district court should not dismiss a pro se complaint without allowing the plaintiff an opportunity to amend his complaint unless an amendment would be inequitable or futile."). Furthermore, in ruling on the present motion, the Court "must construe [Plaintiff's] complaint liberally as he is proceeding pro se." Huertas v. Galaxy Asset Mgmt., 641 F.3d 28, 32 (3d Cir. 2011) (citing Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007)).

V. Analysis³

A. Plaintiff's Claimed Right to a Jury Trial Under the Seventh Amendment, New Jersey Constitution, and New Jersey Rules of Court

Plaintiff maintains that he had a legal right to a trial by jury in his state court proceedings as guaranteed by the Seventh Amendment of the United States Constitution, Article 1 Paragraph 9 of the New Jersey Constitution, and New Jersey Rules of Court because he has requested and paid for a jury trial. (See generally Am. Compl.).

Plaintiff's argument is misplaced. First, it is well-settled that "the first ten Amendments [to the United States Constitution], including of course the Seventh, are not concerned with state action and deal only with Federal action." Minneapolis & St. Louis R.R. Co. v. Bombolis, Adm'r of Nanos, 241 U.S. 211, 217 (1916) (emphasis added). In other words, "the Seventh Amendment applies only to proceedings in courts of the United States and does not in any manner whatever govern or regulate trials by jury in state courts . . . ." (Ibid.) (internal citations omitted). In this case, Plaintiff claims that the New Jersey state court judges "did deny the plaintiff his right to a trial by jury as guaranteed by the [Seventh] Amendment to the United States Constitution." (Am. Compl. at 25, ¶ 1). To that end, Plaintiff's Seventh Amendment argument is misguided because the Seventh Amendment applies only to proceedings in courts of the United States and not state courts.

Second, this Court summarily rejects Plaintiff's argument that he has a right to a trial by jury under the New Jersey Constitution and New Jersey Rules of Court. Plaintiff presented this exact argument during his New Jersey State Court proceedings, to which the Appellate Division held:

The gist of plaintiff's argument on appeal, articulated in particular at oral argument, is that he requested and paid for a jury trial, a constitutional right, which trumped the firm defendants' rights to make a motion to dismiss his complaint and the judicial defendants' right to dismiss his case prior to an adjudication on the merits by a jury. Plaintiff's position is not founded in law. As our Supreme Court has recognized, "in civil matters the constitutional right to a jury trial is not absolute. . . . Even when requested, the failure to present evidence warranting submission of a factual issue to the jury is the functional equivalent of a waiver of the right to have a jury decide the case." Brill v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 142 N.J. 520, 537 (1995). Specifically, in the context of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, the law is clear that "a court must dismiss the plaintiff's complaint if it has failed to articulate a legal basis entitling the plaintiff to relief." (citing cases).

Hahn v. Frascella, No. A-0070-10T3, 2011 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS, at *4, 5 (App. Div. June 3, 2011); see also Hahn v. Bergen Reg'l Med. Ctr., Nos. A-2869-09T1, A-6282-09T1, A-1924-10T4, 2011 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1626, at *16, 17 (App. Div. June 23, 2011). This Court declines Plaintiff's invitation to entertain this argument. To do so would be equivalent to an appellate review of the state courts' decisions.

B. The State of New Jersey

Plaintiff claims that "the state of New Jersey den[ied] . . . his civil rights via the maladministration of the events of the Supreme Court of New Jersey." (Am. Compl. at 8, ¶ 1).

The Court need not dwell on this issue because the law is clear: "[t]he Eleventh Amendment of the United States Constitution protects a state or state agency from a suit brought in federal court by one of its citizens regardless of the relief sought, unless Congress specifically abrogates the state's immunity or the state waives its own immunity." Thorpe v. New Jersey, 246 F. App'x 86, 87 (3d Cir. 2010); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 663 (1974). Congress has not abrogated the state's sovereign immunity with respect to § 1983. See ibid. ("Section 1983does not abrogate states' immunity."). "And New Jersey has neither consented to suit nor has it waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity." Ibid. Accordingly,...