PENNINGTON v. NATIONSTAR MORTGAGE LLC et al

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
DANIELLE PENNINGTON,
Plaintiff,
v.
NATIONSTAR MORTGAGE LLC, et al.,
Defendants.
Civil Action No. 25-00568 (AHA)
Memorandum Opinion
Danielle Pennington sues several people and companies involved in the foreclosure on and
her eviction from a property. She asserts various claims that appear to be related to the foreclosure
and eviction proceedings in D.C. Superior Court, and requests damages, as well as various forms
of injunctive and declaratory relief, including quiet title to the property. Several defendants move
to dismiss the complaint, arguing that this court lacks jurisdiction to hear these claims and that
Pennington fails to state a claim. For the reasons below, the court dismisses the case.
I. Background1
In 2010, Pennington bought the property at 4908 Quarles St. NE in Washington, D.C. with
a secured mortgage. See ECF No. 1 ¶ 18; ECF No. 1-2 at 2–7. After she defaulted on her mortgage
loan, defendant Nationstar Mortgage LLC started foreclosure proceedings and the D.C. Superior
Court granted judgment to Nationstar in November 2017. Id. ¶¶ 5, 19; Order Granting Plaintiff’s
Motion For Judgment On The Pleadings And Decree For Sale Of Real Property, Nationstar
1 As required at the pleading stage, the court accepts the complaint’s well-pled factual
allegations and draws all reasonable inferences in Pennington’s favor. Banneker Ventures, LLC v.
Graham, 798 F.3d 1119, 1129 (D.C. Cir. 2015).
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Mortgage, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No. 2015-CA-000244-R(RP) (D.C. Super. Ct. Nov. 6,
2017). Nationstar appears to have bought the property, and the Superior Court ratified the sale and
closed the foreclosure proceeding in 2019. See ECF No. 1-2 at 18; Order Granting Motion To
Ratify Sale Of Real Property, Nationstar Mortgage, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No. 2015-CA-
000244-R(RP) (D.C. Super. Ct. Apr. 11, 2019); Order Granting Motion To Ratify Accounting,
Release The Bond, And Close The Case, Nationstar Mortgage, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No.
2015-CA-000244-R(RP) (D.C. Super. Ct. Jun. 21, 2019). Nationstar then filed an action in
Superior Court to evict Pennington and sold the property to First Hand Land, who subsequently
took over the litigation and prevailed. See ECF No. 1-2 at 23–25; Oral Order Granting Motion to
Substitute, First Hand Land, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No. 2019-LTB-011768 (D.C. Super.
Ct. Apr. 19, 2024); Writ Executed, First Hand Land, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No. 2019-LTB-
011768 (D.C. Super. Ct. May 23, 2025).
Pennington now files this federal lawsuit asserting various claims that appear to be related
to the foreclosure and eviction proceedings or judgments. Defendants Nationstar, Westcor Land
Title Insurance Company, Sogol Irene Plagany, Adetunji Darcy Adefehiniti, Justin Fasano, First
Hand Land, Forge Trust Co., and ServiceLink, LLC move to dismiss the complaint for lack of
subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. ECF Nos. 13, 18, 21, 22, 36, 38.
II. Discussion
The court concludes that Pennington’s case must be dismissed for failure to satisfy Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure 8 and because, to the extent Pennington seeks relief from the Superior
Court foreclosure and eviction proceedings or judgments, this court lacks jurisdiction to provide
it.
The federal rules require a complaint to contain “a short and plain statement of the claim
showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). This “does not require
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‘detailed factual allegations,’ but it demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-
harmed-me accusation.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v.
Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007)). This ensures the defendant has “notice of what the claim is
and the grounds upon which it rests.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (cleaned up). A court may dismiss
a complaint that fails to meet these requirements upon motion or on its own accord. See Fed. R.
Civ. P. 41(b); see also Ciralsky v. CIA, 355 F.3d 661, 669 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (“Rule 41(b) authorizes
the court to dismiss either a claim or an action because of the plaintiff’s failure to comply with the
Federal Rules.”); Dali v. Walter Reed Nat’l Mil. Med. Ctr., No. 24-cv-3313, 2025 WL 326575, at
*1 (D.D.C. Jan. 29, 2025) (observing that dismissals under Rule 8(a) “may be ordered on motion
or sua sponte by the court”).
In cases like this involving an unrepresented or “pro se” litigant, the court is careful to give
extra leeway. The court evaluates the complaint “in light of all filings, including filings responsive
to a motion to dismiss.” Ho v. Garland, 106 F.4th 47, 50 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (quotation marks
omitted) (quoting Brown v. Whole Foods Mkt. Grp., Inc., 789 F.3d 146, 152 (D.C. Cir. 2015)). Of
course, an unrepresented plaintiff still “must plead factual matter that permits the court to infer
more than the mere possibility of misconduct.” Jones v. Horne, 634 F.3d 588, 596 (D.C. Cir. 2011)
(quotation marks omitted) (quoting Atherton v. D.C. Off. of Mayor, 567 F.3d 672, 681–82 (D.C.
Cir. 2009)). While “detailed factual allegations” are not necessary, the plaintiff must furnish “more
than labels and conclusions” or “a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action.”
Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555.
Pennington’s allegations fail to provide the defendants with notice of the claims against
them. Pennington lists fourteen counts against fourteen named defendants and several unnamed
defendants. ECF No. 1 at 1–9. Counts one through thirteen each consist of one sentence, asserting
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a legal violation, without any further explanation. Id. at 7–9; see, e.g., id. ¶ 31 (“By proceeding
with eviction based on fraudulent documents, Defendants violated Plaintiff’s constitutional right
to due process and fair proceedings.”). None of these counts identify which defendants are liable,
failing to give any defendant “notice of what the claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.”
Only count fourteen identifies specific defendants. Id. ¶ 39 (“Defendants, Mr. Cooper d/b/a
Nationstar Mortgage and Orlans PC (via Defendant Sogol Irene Plagany), acting as ‘debt
collectors’ under 15 U.S.C. § 1692a(6), attempted to collect a mortgage or purported debt from
plaintiff.”). This count asserts that those defendants “failed to comply with the Fair Debt Collection
Practices Act (FDPA) and Regulation F (12 CFR Part 1006) by failing to provide required
disclosures, engaging in harassing or deceptive practices, and misrepresenting the nature of the
debt and foreclosure status.” Id. ¶ 40. But Pennington does not describe what practices the
defendants engaged in, what misrepresentations they made, or what disclosures they failed to
provide. Nor does the complaint identify when or where these events occurred. Pennington’s
claims accordingly fail to provide the “short and plain statement” required by Rule 8.2
Pennington’s claims are also problematic because “[f]ederal courts are courts of limited
jurisdiction.” Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). A party
seeking relief in the district court must at least plead facts that bring the suit within the court’s
jurisdiction. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(1). And “[w]hen a court lacks subject matter jurisdiction, it
2 Pennington attaches numerous documents to her complaint including emails, deeds, court
filings, screenshots, and loan documents. See ECF Nos. 1-2–1-3. However, unexplained
attachments cannot cure a complaint’s deficiencies. See Nichols v. Vilsack, No. 13-cv-01502, 2015
WL 9581799, at *1 (D.D.C. Dec. 30, 2015) (observing that even in pro se cases, “courts are not
responsible for hunting through the record in search of material potentially helpful to a party’s
case,” and “where undifferentiated documents are submitted along with a complaint that is itself
lacking in detail, asking the Court to comb through the attachments to discern the substance of the
plaintiff’s claims risks . . . denying the defendant fair notice and an opportunity to respond to
identifiable allegations of wrongdoing”).
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must dismiss the case.” Auster v. Ghana Airways Ltd., 514 F.3d 44, 48 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (citing
Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3)). To the extent Pennington’s claims attempt to re-litigate the foreclosure
on the property, this court does not have subject matter jurisdiction to consider them. Under the
Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal district courts may not hear “cases that amount to the functional
equivalent of an appeal from a state court.” Gray v. Poole, 275 F.3d 1113, 1119 (D.C. Cir. 2002).
This prevents federal courts from considering issues that are “so inextricably intertwined with a
state court decision that the district court is in essence being called upon to review the state-court
decision.” Stanton v. D.C. Court of Appeals, 127 F.3d 72, 75 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (quotation marks
and citation omitted). Federal jurisdiction is barred even when the plaintiff claims “that the state
judgment itself violates the [plaintiff’s] federal rights.” Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997,
1005–1006 (1994). Here, the D.C. Superior Court decreed the foreclosure sale of the property and
ratified its subsequent sale. Order Granting Plaintiff’s Motion For Judgment On The Pleadings
And Decree For Sale Of Real Property, Nationstar Mortgage, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No.
2015-CA-000244-R(RP) (D.C. Super. Ct. Nov. 6, 2017); Order Granting Motion To Ratify Sale
Of Real Property, Nationstar Mortgage, LLC v. Danielle Pennington, No. 2015-CA-000244-
R(RP) (D.C. Super. Ct. Apr. 11, 2019). Pennington’s claims appear to challenge the merits of these
decisions insofar as they allege that the foreclosure involved misconduct that renders it invalid.
See, e.g., ECF No. 1 ¶ 35 (“Defendants entered into an agreement to misrepresent ownership and
foreclose on Plaintiff’s Property through deceptive and illegal means.”). And her claims related to
her eviction appear to be premised on the invalidity of the foreclosure. See id. ¶ 27 (“The Plaintiff’s
due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment were violated when wrongful foreclosure and
eviction proceedings were pursued without proper notice or valid standing.”). To the extent
Pennington’s claims ask this court to review the propriety of the foreclosure, they are barred by
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Rooker-Feldman. See Laverpool v. Taylor Bean & Whitaker Reo LLC, 229 F. Supp. 3d 5, 16
(D.D.C. 2017) (concluding that “because Plaintiff is invoking the United States Constitution and
other federal statutes to challenge the propriety of the judicial foreclosure on his property,
Plaintiff’s claims are barred by the Rooker–Feldman doctrine”).3
Because Pennington’s complaint fails to comply with Rule 8, and any possible claims
appear to be barred by Rooker-Feldman, the court dismisses the complaint in its entirety.
III. Conclusion
For these reasons, the court grants the motions to dismiss and dismisses the matter as to all
defendants.
A separate order accompanies this memorandum opinion.
AMIR H. ALI
United States District Judge
Date: January 20, 2026
3 In her opposition to the motions to dismiss, Pennington states that she is not challenging state
court proceedings and is instead challenging certain “2024-2025 acts” causing her “fresh injury.”
ECF No. 48 at 7. To the extent the opposition asserts new claims or allegations, they are conclusory
and fail to satisfy Rule 8. The opposition also appears to challenge the Superior Court’s substitution
of First Hand Land for Nationstar in Pennington’s eviction proceeding, but this claim is barred by
Rooker-Feldman for the reasons stated.
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