Huy-Ying Chen v. King Cnty. Sheriff's Office

HUY-YING CHEN, Plaintiff, v. KING COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE et al., Defendants.

No. 2:21-cv-01492-LK

United States District Court, W.D. Washington, Seattle

December 27, 2022

ORDER GRANTING DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT AND DENYING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

LAUREN KING, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

This matter comes before the Court on Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Dkt. No. 22, and on Plaintiff Huy-Ying Chen's tardy cross-motion for summary judgment, Dkt. No 30. Mr. Chen, who is proceeding pro se, filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the King County Sheriff's Office (“KCSO”) and Sheriff's Deputy Hugo Esparza, alleging that they violated his Fourteenth Amendment rights and caused him emotional distress by preparing, filing, and recording a void sheriff's deed that deprived him of his home. See Dkt. No. 1 at 11-12. For the reasons set forth below, the Court grants Defendants' motion, denies Mr. Chen's motion, and dismisses this action.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Long History of This Dispute

This case is just the latest chapter in Mr. Chen's ongoing lawsuits. Although this dispute may not have reached “Bleak House” proportions just yet,^[1]it has a 15-year history involving multiple forums.

In 1999, Mr. Chen and his now-deceased wife borrowed $525,000 from Washington Mutual Bank to purchase a home in King County, Washington. Dkt. No. 24-7 at 4.^[2] Washington Mutual later assigned the loan to JP Morgan Chase Bank. Dkt. No 24-7 at 4.^[3]

The Chens failed to make a substantial portion of the monthly payments due on the loan. Id. In 2006, Chase initiated a judicial foreclosure action. Id. This action spurred over a decade of litigation by Mr. Chen.

In March 2007, Mr. Chen filed for bankruptcy, and on April 13, 2007, he removed Chase's judicial foreclosure action to bankruptcy court. In re Chen, No. 07-01115-PHB, Dkt. No. 1 (Bankr. W.D. Wash.). Finding that “there is no genuine issue of material fact concerning [the Chens'] failure to make the required monthly payments” on the mortgage “and that [the Chens] are in default under the Note and under the terms of the Deed of Trust securing repayment of the Note,” the bankruptcy court in October 2008 determined that Chase was “entitled to have the real property . . . sold at a foreclosure sale.” Id., Dkt. No. 32 at 2. It accordingly granted summary judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a) to Chase, id. at 3, awarded a judgment of $647,476.68 in favor of Chase, and ordered a foreclosure sale of the property. Id., Dkt. No. 32 (order granting summary judgment dated October 18, 2007), Dkt. No. 47 (Judgment and Decree of Foreclosure dated November 29, 2007). Although Mr. Chen now asserts that “the Bankruptcy court erroneously granted JPMorgan's motion for summary judgment,” Dkt. No. 1 at 5, the Chens did not pursue their appeal of that order to final judgment. See Chen v. Chicago Title Fin. Co., No. 07-1972-RSM (W.D. Wash.). And notably, this Court denied the Chens' request for a stay of the foreclosure pending their appeal, finding that “the foreclosure sale of their Redmond home is unavoidable” because the Chens were “unlikely to prevail on appeal against Chase,” and “even if the[y] were to prevail . . . other creditors would still foreclose on their home because the amount of the Chens' debt drastically outweighs the value of their single asset, the Redmond home.” Id., Dkt. No. 15 at 4-5.

Chase registered the bankruptcy court judgment in King County Superior Court as a foreign judgment and obtained an order of sale. Dkt. No. 24-7 at 4, 7; see also JPMorgan Chase Bank v. Chen, No. 08-2-13281-1-SEA (King Cnty. Sup. Ct.) (the “2008 Action”). However, the parties reached an agreement to cancel the pending sale in exchange for the Chens dismissing the appeal of the bankruptcy court judgment. Dkt. No. 24-7 at 4-5; see also In re Chen, Dkt. Nos. 120, 124.

It appears that “efforts to negotiate a payment plan over the next several years were unsuccessful[.]” Dkt. No. 24-7 at 5. In 2011, Mr. Chen filed another suit against Chase in King County Superior Court. Dkt. No. 24-3 at 2. The Court granted defendants' motion to dismiss and dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice in February 2012. Id. at 3.

Chase obtained another order of sale in September 2016, scheduling the date of sale for December 16, 2016. Dkt. No. 24-7 at 5; 2008 Action, Dkt. No. 79 at 15. On December 12, 2016, Mr. Chen filed a “Motion to Dismiss a Wrongful Judicial Foreclosure” in the 2008 Action. Dkt. No. 24-7 at 5. The superior court denied Mr. Chen's motion, permitting the sale to proceed as scheduled. Id. The sale occurred on December 16, 2016, and the following month Mr. Chen filed an objection to confirmation of the sale. Id. The trial court overruled his objections and denied his subsequent motion for reconsideration. Id.

Mr. Chen appealed, and the Washington court of appeals affirmed. Dkt. No. 24-7. It rejected Mr. Chen's claims that there had been irregularities with the sale, including his claims that he did not receive notice of the sale, that the judgment was unenforceable because it expired before the foreclosure date, and that the judgment was void because it was filed in the trial court while his bankruptcy case was stayed. Id. at 5-8.

Undeterred, Mr. Chen filed another lawsuit against Chase, its Vice President, and various attorneys in August 2018, this time in federal district court. Huy-Ying Chen v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, No. 2:18-CV-1269-RSL, Dkt. No. 1 (W.D. Wash. Aug. 27, 2018). He asserted causes of action for “lack of standing to foreclose,” fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, quiet title, slander of title, and declaratory relief. Id. In April 2019, the Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss, holding that the Chens “fail[ed] to raise a federal question in their complaint” and failed to show that they had “complete diversity with all defendants.” Huy-Ying Chen v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, No. 2:18-CV-1269-RSL, 2019 WL 1651688, at *3 (W.D. Wash. Apr. 17, 2019). The Court also denied Chen's motion for reconsideration. 2019 WL 2248048 (W.D. Wash. May 24, 2019).

Mr. Chen then returned to state court, filing a “Motion to Set Aside Sheriff Sale and Vacate Sheriff's Certificate of Purchaser under CR (60) Due to Plaintiff Counsel Defective Foreclosure & Fraudulent in its Concoction by Misrepresented Affidavit Vacate Sheriff's Certificate of Purchaser” on June 17, 2019 in the 2008 Action. 2008 Action, Dkt. No. 79. Mr. Chen supported his motion with “newly discovered evidence”: a “BP Investigation Report” from July 25, 2017. See Id., Dkt. No. 86 at 3, 7-13.^[4] The court denied Mr. Chen's motion and issued an order granting The Bank of New York Trust Company's^[5] motion to confirm the sheriff's sale. 2008 Action, Dkt. Nos. 71, 89.

In June 2019, Mr. Chen filed another lawsuit in King County Superior Court against JPMorgan Chase, its Vice President, and Mortgage Asset-Backed Pass-Through Certificates Series 2005-RP3. Dkt. No. 24-10. That case was dismissed with prejudice for failure to state a claim on September 30, 2019. Dkt. No. 24-11 at 3.

Mr. Chen then refiled essentially the same lawsuit in the same court in October 2021. Dkt. No. 24-12; see also Chen v. JP Morgan Chase Bank, No. 21-2-14448-5-SEA (King Cnty. Sup. Ct.). He again removed the case to bankruptcy court in April 2022, where the court granted The Bank of New York Trust Company's motion to remand and denied Chen's motion for reconsideration. In Re Chen, No. 22-10615-CMA, Dkt. Nos. 1, 29, 34 (Bankr. W.D. Wash.). In its order denying the motion for reconsideration, the bankruptcy court noted that Mr. Chen raised “arguments that [he] has already made several times in this case and in the now-dismissed underlying bankruptcy proceeding.” Id., Dkt. No. 34 at 2. And in August 2022, the court barred Mr. Chen from filing any bankruptcy case for two years, reasoning that:

Despite the existence of lawsuits that Mr. Chen has filed against other entities, all of them are premised upon the false claim that he makes that he was wrongfully deprived of his property. The orders have been entered by multiple courts and affirmed by courts of appeal and the Washington Supreme Court has denied cert on all of these issues that Mr. Chen continues to raise year after year after year. So that ship has sailed....

This [is] a bad faith filing....[Mr. Chen] clearly filed this case intending to defeat the eviction action pending by the current owner of the property, though he has not explained why he removed that action here, which is what he did. But clearly that was the only point of this bankruptcy, again punctuated by his oral argument this morning that is merely attacking the owner and everything about his loss of the property....

The debtor's behavior in this case has been egregious: he has filed a number of pleadings attacking [The Bank of New York Trust Company], its counsel, and asserting that somehow he can unwind the judicial foreclosure when the state court has rejected this argument multiple times.

The fact that the debtor only filed this case to benefit from the automatic stay and seek a new venue for his frivolous claims is demonstrated by two facts. One, his response to this motion in which he was directed to explain why this case was not filed in bad faith, but instead he just continues to attack [The Bank of New York Trust Company] and claim that orders entered by prior courts are wrong. And this court has already told Mr. Chen multiple times that this court cannot challenge orders entered by another court. And rather than addressing his own behavior, that is the . . . tack he takes. And second, more importantly, the debtor was required to file an amended plan by July 11, see ECF

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