Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. v. Shaffer

72 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173641, 2014 WL 7180777
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Alabama
DecidedDecember 16, 2014
DocketCivil Action No. 2:14-cv-1690-WMA
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 72 F. Supp. 3d 1265 (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. v. Shaffer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. v. Shaffer, 72 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173641, 2014 WL 7180777 (N.D. Ala. 2014).

Opinion

[1267]*1267 MEMORANDUM OPINION

WILLIAM M. ACKER, JR., District Judge.

On November 27, 2012, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“Freddie Mac” or “plaintiff’) filed the above-entitled suit against Evelyn B. Shaffer (“Shaffer” or “defendant”) in the Circuit Court uf Jefferson County, Alabama. Freddie Mac sought one simple remedy available under the law of Alabama, namely, the eviction of Shaffer from certain real property, the title to which Freddie Mac had ostensibly acquired at a foreclosure sale. On September 2, 2014, nearly 22 months later, Freddie Mac removed the case to this court. For the purposes of this court’s inquiry into Freddie Mac’s right to remove under these circumstances, there is no significance to the fact that before the removal, Shaffer filed a counterclaim against Freddie Mac and a third-party complaint against Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC (“Ocwen”), attacking the foreclosure sale, or the fact that Ocwen did not join in Freddie Mac’s notice of removal.

Indispensable to any removal is a showing that the district court to which the case is removed has subject matter jurisdiction. The burden of satisfying the court on this threshold issue is firmly and always upon the removing party.

Freddie Mac’s notice of removal conspicuously invokes neither of the two customary bases for federal jurisdiction, namely, complete diversity of citizenship between the opposing parties (28 U.S.C. § 1332)1 or the existence of a federal question (28 U.S.C. § 1331). Rather, Freddie Mac’s sole basis for positing jurisdiction in this court is 12 U.S.C. § 1452(f), a sui generis statute, so peculiar, in fact, as to call for its meticulous examination as it applies or does not apply to the facts of this case. The statute reads as follows:

(f) Actions by and against the Corporation [Freddie Mac]; jurisdiction; removal of actions
Notwithstanding section 1349 of Title 28 or any other provision of law, (1) the Corporation shall be deemed to be an agency included in sections 1345 and 1442 of such Title 28; (2) all civil actions to which the Corporation is a party shall be deemed to arise under the laws of the United States, and the district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction of all such actions, without regard to amount or value; and (3) any civil or other action, case or controversy in a court of a State, or in any court other than a district court of the United States, to which the Corporation is a party may at any time before the trial thereof be removed by the Corporation, without the giving of any bond or security, to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place where the same is pending, or, if there is no such district court, to the district court of the United States for the district in which the principal office of the Corporation is located, by following any procedure for removal of causes in effect at the time of such removal, (emphasis added.)

In its notice of removal, Freddie Mac expressly relies upon 12 U.S.C. § 1452(f)(1), and even quotes part of it in haec verba: “The corporation shall be deemed an agency included in sections 1345 and 1442 of such Title 28.” (Doc. 1). Relying upon § 1452(f)(1), Freddie Mac not only claims that, as a matter of law, it

[1268]*1268is an agency of the United States within the purview of 28 U.S.C. §§ 1345 and 1442, but that by virtue of the subsequent language in § 1452(f)(2) its simple, straightforward state-law claim, has been transmogrified into a claim that arose under the laws of the United States; and that § 1452(f)(3) grants it the unrestrained right, long after it filed its ejectment action in state court, to remove it to this court, a court that it suddenly prefers for no articulated reason.

Even without a challenge to this court’s subject matter jurisdiction, the court is obligated, as its first responsibility, to conduct a sua sponte examination to satisfy itself, if it can do so, that it has subject matter jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c); American Fire & Casualty Co. v. Finn, 341 U.S. 6, 17, 71 S.Ct. 534, 95 L.Ed. 702 (1951); Univ. of S. Alabama v. Am. Tobacco Co., 168 F.3d 405, 410 (11th Cir.1999) (“it is well settled that a federal court is obligated to inquire into subject matter jurisdiction sua sponte whenever it may be lacking”). This court will therefore now undertake its obligatory self-examination of whether or not it has jurisdiction.

Neither the Supreme Court nor the Eleventh Circuit has answered the jurisdictional questions presented here by § 1452(f). Without any binding precedent, the court is left with (1) the undisputed procedural facts of this case; (2) the pertinent statutes themselves; (3) a meager number of non-binding court decisions, only one of which the court finds persuasive; and (4) the rules of statutory construction. The single court decision that this court finds persuasive is Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation v. Amersey, 2014 WL 1400086 (E.D.Mich., April 9, 2014). Amersey is not only the most recent case on point, but it is a case that shares with the above-styled ease all of the pertinent procedural facts, and in which the Eastern Division of Michigan remanded Freddie Mac’s state court ejectment action to the state court from which Freddie Mac had improvidently removed it. The discussion that follows confessedly borrows heavily from Amersey.

UNDERSTANDING 12 U.S.C. § 1452(f)

Rule of Construction Number One

This court necessarily begins its analysis with the strong presumption arising from the principle that “ ‘[flederal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction,’ possessing ‘only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.’ ” Gunn v. Minton, — U.S. —, 133 S.Ct. 1059, 1064, 185 L.Ed.2d 72 (2013), quoting Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of America, 511 U.S. 375, 377, 114 S.Ct. 1673, 128 L.Ed.2d 391 (1994). “Because removal jurisdiction raises significant federalism concerns, federal courts are directed to construe removal statutes strictly.” Univ. Of S. Alabama v. Am. Tobacco Co., 168 F.3d 405, 411 (11th Cir.1999), citing Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp. v. Sheets,

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72 F. Supp. 3d 1265, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173641, 2014 WL 7180777, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/federal-home-loan-mortgage-corp-v-shaffer-alnd-2014.