Lewis v. NH Superior Court Chief Justice

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
Allan Lewis
v. Civ. No. 25-cv-009-LM-AJ
Mark Howard
Chief Justice of the
NH Superior Court Division
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
Self-represented plaintiff Allan Lewis has sued New
Hampshire Superior Court Chief Justice Mark Howard based on
alleged infirmities in court proceedings that culminated in an
order requiring Mr. Lewis to vacate a mobile home park.
Presently before the court for a recommended disposition is
Justice Howard’s motion to dismiss (Doc. No. 13). The motion
asserts several bases for dismissal, including lack of subject
matter jurisdiction pursuant to the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, see
Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1), judicial immunity, res judicata, and
failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See
Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). As explained more fully below, the
motion should be granted.
Standards of Review
A motion under Rule 12(b)(1) to dismiss for lack of
subject-matter jurisdiction may raise either a facial challenge
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(where the moving party asserts that the complainant's
allegations are insufficient on their face to state a basis for
federal jurisdiction) or a factual challenge (where the moving
party argues that the court lacks jurisdiction as a matter of
fact). See Torres-Negron v. J & N Records, LLC, 504 F.3d 151,
162 & n.8 (1st Cir. 2007) (citations omitted). Where the
challenge is facial, the court presumes the truth of the
jurisdictional facts alleged in the complaint. See Gordo-
González v. United States, 873 F.3d 32, 35 (1st Cir. 2017).
Where the challenge is factual, “there is no presumption of
truthfulness attached to the plaintiff's allegations, and
plaintiff bears the burden of proving the facts supporting
subject matter jurisdiction by a preponderance of the evidence.”
5B Wright & Miller, Fed. Prac. & Proc. Civ. § 1350 (3d ed.); see
also Torres-Negron, 504 F.3d at 163.
Under Rule 12(b)(6), the court must accept the factual
allegations in the complaint as true, construe reasonable
inferences in the plaintiff's favor, and “determine whether the
factual allegations in the plaintiff's complaint set forth a
plausible claim upon which relief may be granted.” Foley v.
Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 772 F.3d 63, 68, 71 (1st Cir. 2014)
(quotation omitted). A claim is facially plausible “when the
plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw
the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the
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misconduct alleged.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678,
(2009). Analyzing plausibility is “a context-specific task” in
which the court relies on its “judicial experience and common
sense.” Id. at 679.
Factual Background and Prior Proceedings
The court treats Mr. Lewis’s second amended complaint
(“SAC”) (Doc. No. 5) as the operative complaint for purposes of
the pending motion.1 This suit stems from what Mr. Lewis
describes as “abuse of power under the color of law” in two
Strafford County Superior Court cases: Lewis v. Briar Ridge
Estates, No. 219-2020-CV-00065 (filed Feb. 10, 2020) (“the 2020
case”); Lewis v. NBV-Brier Ridge LLC, No. 219-2024-CV-0067
(filed Feb. 20, 2024) (“the 2024 case”).
Mr. Lewis previously filed a lawsuit in this court premised
on the 2020 case. See Lewis v. The Hynes Group and Briar Ridge
Estates, et al., Civ. No. 21-597-LM (filed July 12, 2021)
(“Lewis I”). In addition to the SAC and the proposed third
amended complaint, the court draws its factual narrative from
the Order dismissing Lewis I, 2022 WL 579237 (D.N.H. Feb. 16,
2022) (“Dismissal Order”) and related state court dockets. See
Gilbert v. City of Chicopee, 915 F.3d 74, 80 (1st Cir. 2019);
1 As Judge McCafferty indicated in her April 3, 2026, Order
denying Mr. Lewis’s motion to amend, the court is considering
the allegations in Mr. Lewis’s proposed third amended complaint
in its analysis of the pending motion.
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Kowalski v. Gagne, 914 F.2d 299, 305 (1st Cir. 1990) (“It is
well-accepted that federal courts may take judicial notice of
proceedings in other courts if those proceedings have relevance
to the matters at hand.”).
Until approximately June 2021, Mr. Lewis resided in a
mobile home in the Briar Ridge mobile home park located in
Rochester, New Hampshire. Dismissal Order at *1. He had moved
into the mobile home with his purported common-law wife Lynn
Lombard in 1989. Lombard passed away in 2019, and Mr. Lewis
subsequently filed an application to place the mobile home in
his name, which Briar Ridge ultimately rejected. Id.
Mr. Lewis subsequently notified Briar Ridge that the mobile
home’s water heater was frozen and required repair. Id. Briar
Ridge asserted in response that Mr. Lewis was at fault, that the
meter would cost approximately $600 to repair, and that Brier
Ridge would need the money upfront before commencing work. Id.
Claiming that Briar Ridge’s demand for upfront payment violated
the mobile home park’s rules, Mr. Lewis filed the 2020 case for
declaratory and injunctive relief in Strafford County Superior
Court and requested, among other things, an emergency hearing
for injunctive relief. Id. An emergency order was subsequently
issued which required Briar Ridge to repair or replace the water
meter consistent with park rules, at Mr. Lewis’s expense. Id. at
*2.
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The same day the emergency order was issued, Briar Ridge
answered the complaint and filed a counterclaim for common law
ejectment. Briar Ridge asserted that Mr. Lewis was not a tenant
of the mobile home park because he was not the title owner of
the mobile home, nor had he ever paid rent or other
consideration to the park. Briar Ridge also argued that, even if
Mr. Lewis was a tenant, he had violated multiple sections of the
park’s rules and regulations, which justified his eviction. Id.
As part of that litigation, Briar Ridge propounded
interrogatories to Mr. Lewis about several topics, including his
criminal record and creditworthiness, which he refused to
answer. Id. Mr. Lewis was conditionally defaulted for his
failure to answer, and default judgment eventually followed. Id.
at *3.
In March of 2021, Judge Howard issued a final decree of
judgment that granted Briar Ridge’s counterclaims and ordered
Mr. Lewis to vacate the mobile home. Id. Mr. Lewis’s motion to
reconsider and appeal to the New Hampshire Supreme Court were
both unsuccessful. Id. at 5. Mr. Lewis nevertheless refused to
vacate the mobile home. Id. Briar Ridge then moved for a writ of
possession, which Judge Howard granted in June 2021. Id. Mr.
Lewis filed “numerous post-judgment filings and appeals”
regarding that matter, and Judge Howard ultimately issued an
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order explaining to Lewis that the Superior Court litigation was
“closed.” Id. (citing 2020 case).
Mr. Lewis commenced the 2024 case against Briar Ridge’s
successor in title, NBV-Briar Ridge, LLC. Following dismissal of
the case, the trial court ordered Mr. Lewis to pay the defendant
$4,900 in attorney’s fees. He appealed that order to the New
Hampshire Supreme Court in 2025, arguing, among other things,
that Justice Howard lacked subject matter jurisdiction to award
possession of the subject real estate to Briar Ridge in the 2020
case. The Supreme Court affirmed on July 17, 2025, noting in
part that, Mr. Lewis had “failed to develop an argument why the
purported jurisdictional defect . . . in a prior case deprived
the trial court of authority to award attorney’s fees to the
defendant in th[e 2024] case.” Def. Mem., Exh. C (Doc. No. 13-
4) at 1.
In July 2021, while his appeals of the orders in the 2020
Superior Court case were pending, Mr. Lewis commenced Lewis I in
this court. He sought declaratory, injunctive, and monetary
relief, arising from state-court orders mandating that he vacate
… [the subject] mobile home.” Dismissal Order at *1, *3. He
argued that Justice Howard “lacked authority” to enter judgment
against him in the 2020 case, that his orders violated Mr.
Lewis’s “Fourteenth and Seventh Amendment[] [rights,] and that
the final default judgment and eviction orders deprived him of
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his judicially confirmed tenant rights under state law.” See id.
at *3. This court dismissed Mr. Lewis’s complaint, holding that
Justice Howard and other judicial defendants were “immune from
suit by the doctrine of state sovereign immunity, as recognized
in the Eleventh Amendment, and the doctrine of judicial
immunity, as modified by 42 U.S.C. § 1983.” Id. at *5. The Court
also found that it lacked jurisdiction to even consider Lewis’s
remaining “civil rights” claims, because such claims sought to
have the Federal Court “review and overturn” the Superior
Court’s judgments in violation of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine.
Id. at *5-6.
In this action, though Justice Howard is the only named
defendant, Mr. Lewis devotes most of the SAC to Justice
Livernois’s order requiring him to pay attorneys’ fees in the
2024 case. See SAC (Doc. No. 5) at 1. He also again challenges
his eviction from the mobile home and the owner’s taking
possession of it – the subject of the 2020 case. Id at 8. Both
claims are premised on his argument that the Superior Court
lacked jurisdiction over the dispute. He seeks declarations that
all prior state court orders are void, $1 million in damages
from the “Strafford County Superior Court,” and an order
requiring the Superior Court to remand this case to the Circuit
Court’s landlord-tenant division.
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Discussion
A. Rooker-Feldman Doctrine2
Justice Howard first argues that Mr. Lewis’s claims are
barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. With respect to claims
based on the 2020 case, the court agrees.
In Lewis I, the court explained the Rooker-Feldman doctrine
as follows:
The United States Supreme Court has exclusive
jurisdiction over appeals from final state-court
judgments. 28 U.S.C. § 1257. For that reason, under
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, this court, like all
lower federal courts, lacks jurisdiction to consider
claims brought by “state-court losers” that challenge
“state-court judgments” that were entered before the
federal case began. Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Saudi Basic
Indus. Corp., 544 U.S. 280, 284 (2005); Klimowicz v.
Deutsche Bank Nat'l Tr. Co., 907 F.3d 61, 64–65 (1st
Cir. 2018). This jurisdictional bar “is not contingent
upon an identity between the issues actually litigated
in the prior state-court proceedings and the issues
proffered in the subsequent federal suit. Instead, the
question is whether the plaintiff's federal suit is,
in effect, an end-run around a final state-court
judgment.” Klimowicz, 907 F.3d at 66 (citation
omitted).
Lewis I, 2022 WL 579237, at *5 (D.N.H. Feb. 16, 2022).
The same reasoning leads this court to conclude that the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine bars any claims based on Justice
Howard’s rulings in the 2020 case. Based on the allegations in
2 The Rooker-Feldman doctrine takes its name from two
Supreme Court cases: Rooker v. Fid. Tr. Co., 263 U.S. 413 (1923)
and D.C. Ct. of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U.S. 462 (1983).
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his complaint and the relief he seeks, Mr. Lewis is undoubtedly
seeking “an end-run” around the New Hamshire Supreme Court’s
multiple affirmances of Justice Howard’s orders.3 As this court
noted in Lewis I – in which claims were asserted against the
landlord and the “New Hampshire Judicial Branch” – “[f]or Lewis
to succeed with any of his claims, however stylized, this
federal district court necessarily would have to find that the
state court orders and/or the defendants’ alleged actions that
lead to the orders violated Lewis's rights.” Id. at *6. So it is
in this case. Mr. Lewis can only succeed in this federal forum
if this court nullifies the state court findings, which it
cannot do. See Dempsey v. Massachusetts State, 959 F.2d 230,
1992 WL 60438, at *1 (1st Cir. 1992) (unpublished) (“[F]ederal
district courts do not sit as ‘super appellate courts’ reviewing
errors allegedly committed by a state court.”) (citation
omitted). Mr. Lewis’s path to relief from the New Hampshire
Supreme Court’s rulings was an appeal to the United States
Supreme Court. Accordingly, this court lacks subject matter
jurisdiction over claims against Justice Howard based on the
2020 case.
3 This suit was commenced on January 6, 2025, roughly two
weeks after the final entry on the state court docket, noting
that the New Hampshire Supreme Court denied Mr. Lewis’s request
for appellate relief. Therefore, Rooker-Feldman’s requirement
that federal court proceedings commence after the conclusion of
state court matters is satisfied.
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B. Claims based on the 2024 Case
Because Mr. Lewis commenced this action before the
conclusion of the 2024 state case, Rooker-Feldman cannot serve
as a jurisdictional bar. But as Justice Howard asserts, and as
the state court docket summary confirms, he took no part in the
2024 case. Accordingly, any claims against Justice Howard based
on the 2024 case should be dismissed because they fail to state
a claim against him upon which relief can be granted. See Fed.
R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).
In addition, to the extent that the SAC or the facts
alleged in the proposed Third Amended Complaint can be construed
to assert claims against any other individual based on the 2024
case – even though no other defendants are named in the
complaint -- those claims are barred by the doctrine of res
judicata.
The term “res judicata” encompasses both claim preclusion
and issue preclusion. See LeBlanc v. Americredit Fin. Servs.,
Inc., No. 25-CV-163-JL-AJ, 2025 WL 1930181, at *2 (D.N.H. July
8, 2025) (citing Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880, 892 (2008)),
report and recommendation approved, No. 25-CV-163-JL-AJ, 2025 WL
1928026 (D.N.H. July 11, 2025) (appeal docketed, No. 25-1665
(1st Cir. July 15, 2025). To determine whether this action is
precluded by the prior state court actions, this court must look
to the law of res judicata in New Hampshire. See Dillon v.
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Select Portfolio Servs., 630 F.3d 75, 80 (1st Cir. 2011) (“Under
federal law, a state court judgment receives the same preclusive
effect as it would receive under the law of the state in which
it was rendered.”). For collateral estoppel4 to apply, (1) the
issue subject to estoppel must be identical in each action, (2)
the first action must have resolved the issue finally on the
merits, and (3) the party to be estopped must have appeared as a
party in the first action, or be in privity with someone who
did. Sutliffe v. Epping Sch. Dist., 627 F. Supp. 2d 41, 56
(D.N.H. 2008) (citing Stewart v. Bader, 154 N.H. 75, 80–81, 907
A.2d 931 (2006)), aff'd, 584 F.3d 314 (1st Cir. 2009).
All three factors are satisfied. Mr. Lewis is the plaintiff
in state court and this court; he argued in state court, as he
does here, that the Superior Court lacked jurisdiction over the
merits of his dispute with Briar Ridge, an argument which the
state Supreme Court rejected. Mr. Lewis, therefore, may not re-
litigate the jurisdiction issue in this court. Since his claims
4 The court looks to principles of collateral estoppel –
issue preclusion – because neither the Superior Court Justices
nor the Judicial Branch were defendants in the state court
proceedings. See Meier v. Town of Littleton, 154 N.H. 340, 342,
910 A.2d 1243, 1245 (2006) (claim preclusion requires the same
parties as in the previous suit.)
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in this court depend on this rejected threshhold argument,
claims based on the 2024 case are precluded.5
Conclusion
Based on the foregoing, the defendant’s motion to dismiss
(Doc. No. 13) should be granted. If the district judge accepts
this recommendation all other pending motions should be denied
as moot, including Mr. Lewis’s motion for summary judgment (Doc.
No. 15), motion to expedite (Doc. No. 17), and motion to stay
(Doc. No. 21); and the defendant’s motions to hold in abeyance
(Doc. Nos. 16 and 18).
Any objections to this Report and Recommendation must be
filed within fourteen days of receipt of this notice. Fed. R.
Civ. P. 72(b)(2). The fourteen-day period may be extended upon
motion. Failure to file any objection within the specified time
waives the right to appeal the district court's Order. See
5 As the Rooker-Feldman doctrine implicates the court’s
subject matter jurisdiction, the court is generally obligated to
consider that issue first. See, e.g., United States v. University
of Mass., Worcester, 812 F.3d 35, 44 (1st Cir. 2016). As is
readily apparent from the previous discussion, however, any
claims against Justice Howard in this case that are premised on
the 2020 case are also precluded due to this court’s dismissal
of those claims in Lewis I. See Walker v. Day, 173 N.H. 211,
213, 238 A.3d 1096, 1099 (2020) (“The doctrine of res judicata
precludes the litigation in a later case of matters actually
decided, and matters that could have been litigated, in an
earlier action between the same parties for the same cause of
action.”).
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Santos-Santos v. Torres-Centeno, 842 F.3d 163, 168 (1st Cir.
2016). Only those issues raised in the objection(s) to this
Report and Recommendation “are subject to review in the district
court.” Id. (cleaned up). Additionally, any issues “not
preserved by such objection are precluded on appeal.” Id.
______________________________
Andrea K. Johnstone
United States Magistrate Judge
April 6, 2026
cc: Allen Lewis, pro se
Counsel of Record
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