United States District Court, D. Connecticut
RULING ON MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION
Michael P. Shea, U.S.D.J.
I.
Introduction
Plaintiff
Heftziba Mandell filed this action against Defendants Donna
Dollof, individually and as executrix of the estate of
Barbara Goyette, Raymond Goyette, [1] the Estate of Barbara
Goyette (“the Estate”), and John Does
(collectively, “Defendants”), claiming that
Defendants Dollof and Goyette breached a contract they
entered into with Mandell for the purchase of real property
in East Windsor, Connecticut (“the Property”), by
authorizing the sale of that property to a John Doe
defendant. (See Revised Complaint, ECF No. 2.)
On July
24, 2018, I granted in part and denied in part
Defendants' motions to dismiss the complaint. I held that
the probate exception to federal diversity jurisdiction
barred the Court from adjudicating Plaintiff's in rem
claims for specific performance of a contract, declaratory
judgment, and constructive trust, but that it did not bar the
Court from adjudicating Plaintiff's in personam claim for
tortious interference. (ECF No. 33.) I assume familiarity
with the underlying facts as recited in that decision.
Plaintiff moved for reconsideration of that ruling, arguing
that the Court misapplied Connecticut law governing the
Probate Court's limited jurisdiction over real property
and erred in concluding that the probate exception applies to
this case. (ECF Nos. 36, 37.) For the following reasons,
Plaintiff's Motion for Reconsideration is DENIED.
II.
Legal Standard
A
motion for reconsideration “is not a vehicle for
relitigating old issues, presenting the case under new
theories, securing a rehearing on the merits, or otherwise
taking a ‘second bite at the apple' . . . .”
Analytical Surveys, Inc. v. Tonga Partners, L.P.,
684 F.3d 36, 52 (2d Cir. 2012), as amended (July 13, 2012)
(quoting Sequa Corp. v. GBJ Corp., 156 F.3d 136, 144
(2d Cir. 1998)). Instead, “the standard for granting [a
motion for reconsideration] is strict, and reconsideration
will generally be denied unless the moving party can point to
controlling decisions or data that the court
overlooked.” Shrader v. CSX Transp., Inc., 70
F.3d 255, 257 (2d Cir. 1995); see also D. Conn. L. R. 7(c)(1)
(“[Motions for reconsideration] will generally be
denied unless the movant can point to controlling decisions
or data that the court overlooked in the initial decision or
order.”).
III.
Discussion
Plaintiff
first argues that the Court erred in relying on federal case
law in determining that the probate exception to federal
diversity jurisdiction applied to her claims for specific
performance of a contract, declaratory judgment, and
constructive trust. While a federal court sitting in
diversity “generally applies the law of the state in
which it sits” on outcome-determinative matters, In
re Coudert Bros. LLP, 673 F.3d 180, 186 (2d Cir. 2012),
it is well-settled that federal law defines the scope of the
Court's diversity jurisdiction, and thus the probate
exception to that jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332;
Marshall v. Marshall, 547 U.S. 293, 298 (2006)
(discussing the probate exception as a “judicially
created, ” “longstanding limitation[] on federal
jurisdiction”). Thus, the Court did not err in relying
on the Supreme Court decisions in Marshall and Markham v.
Allen, 326 U.S. 490 (1946), and the Second Circuit's
decision in Lefkowitz v. Bank of N.Y., 528 F.3d 102
(2d Cir. 2007), all of which are binding precedent on the
question before me.
Plaintiff
also argues that I failed to consider Connecticut law
governing the Probate Court's limited jurisdiction over
real property. Plaintiff points out that Connecticut General
Statutes § 45a-98 limits the jurisdiction of the
Connecticut Probate Courts, and that Connecticut courts have
interpreted this limited grant of jurisdiction to mean that
the probate courts may not exercise jurisdiction “over
a breach of contract action, whether to obtain damages or
specific performance, simply because the property belongs to
an estate.” Bender v. Bender, 292 Conn. 696,
716 (2009). But this limitation on the causes of action the
Probate Court may adjudicate does not negate the Probate
Court's custody or control over property while
administering an estate-which was the basis for my ruling.
As
discussed in the Court's ruling on the motions to
dismiss, the facts of this case make clear that the Probate
Court did, in fact, have control over the Property at the
time Mandell filed this action: at that time, the Property
belonged to Ms. Goyette's estate, the Estate remained
open, the executor had filed applications with the Probate
Court for permission to dispose of the Property, and the
Probate Court was in the process of adjudicating the disposal
of the Property. See, e.g., Yien-Koo King v. Wang,
No. 14 Civ. 7694 (JFK), 2018 WL 1478044, at *8 (S.D.N.Y. Mar.
26, 2018) (finding that claims for constructive trust,
replevin, and other injunctive relief fell into the probate
exception because they sought to have the court exercise
control over property that was part of the estate at the time
of the decedent's death); Newcomb v. Sweeney,
No. 3:11-CV-399 (VLB), 2013 WL 1774651, at *3 (D. Conn. Apr.
25, 2013) (holding that the probate exception barred the
court from determining plaintiff's claim to title of an
asset in the probate estate); Groman v. Cola, No. 07
CV 2635 (RPP), 2007 WL 3340922, at *5-6 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 7,
2007) (holding that a claim to determine the value of an
asset possessed by the decedent at death but sold as an
estate asset fell within the probate exception because the
asset was part of the estate).
Moreover,
Connecticut's limitations on the Probate Court's
jurisdiction do not translate into expanded jurisdiction for
the federal court. As Plaintiff notes, she was free to file
this action in Connecticut Superior Court, which would have
had jurisdiction over her specific performance, declaratory
judgment, and constructive trust claims, and might have been
willing to exercise that jurisdiction despite the potential
impact on the probate proceedings. But that does not make it
any more likely that those claims fall within the
jurisdiction of a federal court, which, unlike the
Connecticut Superior Court, is a court of limited
jurisdiction. One of the limits is the probate exception to
diversity jurisdiction, which, as explained in my ruling,
applies whenever a particular claim would require the federal
court to exercise custody or control over a res in the
custody or control of a probate court. The state law
restrictions on the Connecticut Probate Court's power to
adjudicate particular claims are beside the point, as long as
the property itself was under the control of the Probate
Court when this action was filed.[2]
Finally,
Plaintiff argues that “the fact that a lis pendens was
filed with the probate court before it ordered the sale of
the property . . . was notice to the probate court that in
fact it did not have control of the property.” (ECF No.
37 at 6.) There are two problems with the Plaintiff's lis
pendens argument. First, it was not raised in her original
opposition to the motions to dismiss or, for that matter, in
her initial motion for reconsideration, but was instead
asserted for the first time in a “revised memorandum of
law” in support of the motion for reconsideration that
the Plaintiff filed without the Court's permission and
after the deadline in the Local Rule. See D. Conn. L.R. 7(c).
Second, and more substantively, Connecticut's lis pendens
statute makes clear that the notice is to be filed in the
land records where the property is located, not in court, and
the filing of the notice, as described in the case cited by
Plaintiff, gives notice to prospective buyers that “the
property should not be alienated” by the seller while
litigation is pending. Ravitch v. Stollman Poultry Farms,
Inc., 162 Conn. 26, 34 (1971); Conn. Gen. Stat. §
52-325(a) (providing that litigants in an action, “if
the action is intended to affect real property, may cause to
be recorded in the office of the town clerk of each town in
which the property is situated a notice of lis pendens . . .
. Such notice shall, from the time of the recording only, be
notice to any person thereafter acquiring any interest in
such property of the pendency of the action . . . .”).
Nothing in the statute or the Ravitch decision cited by
Plaintiff suggests that a court-including the Connecticut
Probate Court-is prohibited from ordering the transfer of
property within its control simply because someone files
another lawsuit concerning the property in another court. And
nothing in either authority suggests that the Probate Court
somehow lost control of the Property due to the filing in
that court of a notice of lis pendens.
Because
Plaintiff fails to point out controlling decisions or data
that the Court overlooked, I decline to reconsider ...