United States District Court, C.D. California
ORDER RE: DEFENDANT’S “MOTION TO VACATE
ALL COURT ORDERS DUE TO LACK OF FEDERAL QUESTION
JURISDICTION”
HONORABLE RONALD S.W. LEW Senior U.S. District Judge
The
Court is in receipt of Defendant Anshu Pathak’s
(“Pathak”) attempted filing in case number CV
03-1401 (“Omaha Steaks I”) entitled
“Motion to Vacate All Court Orders Due to Lack of
Federal Question Jurisdiction” (“Attempted
Filing”)(see attachment). Having considered all papers
submitted pertaining to the Attempted Filing, the Court
REJECTS Pathak’s Attempted Filing pursuant to the
Vexatious Litigant Order entered in case number CV 10-7054,
Pathak v. Omaha Steaks Int’l Inc., et
al. (“Omaha Steaks II”) (ECF No.
25).
I.
RELEVANT BACKGROUND
On
September 22, 2004, Plaintiff Omaha Steaks (“Omaha
Steaks”) obtained a default judgment against Pathak for
trademark infringement in Omaha Steaks I
(“Omaha Steaks I judgment”). Omaha
Steaks I, ECF No. 94. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the
Omaha Steaks I judgment, and the judgment was
subsequently renewed. Id., ECF Nos. 99, 194.
On
September 22, 2010, Pathak initiated Omaha Steaks II
in an attempt to set aside the Omaha Steaks I
judgment. In Omaha Steaks II, Pathak sought to set
aside the Omaha Steaks I judgment on grounds that
Omaha Steaks allegedly committed fraud on the Court because
Omaha Steaks had not obtained registrations for certain
classes of goods and services at the time it brought the
action for trademark infringement against Pathak.
Omaha
Steaks filed a Motion for Security and Control in Omaha
Steaks II, and moved to declare Pathak a vexatious
litigant. Omaha Steaks II, ECF No. 8. The Court
granted Omaha Steaks’ Motion for Security and Control
in part (“the Vexatious Litigant Order”), deeming
Pathak a vexatious litigant. Id., ECF No. 25.
Pursuant to the Vexatious Litigant Order, if Pathak files any
pleading asserting claims against Omaha Steaks based on the
validity of the Omaha Steaks I judgment or Omaha
Steaks’ alleged fraud on the Court, Pathak is required
to submit the pleading for screening by this Court, and must
make an initial showing of a likelihood of success on the
merits in order for the new claims to be filed. Id.
at 12-13.
II.
DISCUSSION
In this
action, Omaha Steaks I, the Court previously found
that Pashak’s Rule 60(d)(3) Motion for Relief from a
Final Judgment [191] fell within the purview of the Vexatious
Litigant Order because “the Motion represents the very
ills against which the Vexatious Litigant Order is designed
to guard against, namely, Defendant Pathak’s attempts
to evade enforcement of the Omaha Steaks I judgment
and his repeated attempts to re-litigate the validity of that
judgment.” See Order 6:21-27, ECF No. 198. The
Court denied Pathak’s motion because he did not submit
the motion to the Court for screening before filing it, and
because he did not make an initial showing of a likelihood of
success on the merits of the motion. Id. at 7:9-15.
For
similar reasons, the Court REJECTS the instant Attempted
Filing. Once again, Pathak did not submit the Attempted
Filing to the Court for screening. Nor does he make an
initial showing of a likelihood of success on the merits.
Construing
the Attempted Filing liberally, the Court construes
Pathak’s Attempted Filing as a motion to set aside the
judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4)
on grounds that the judgment is void for lack of subject
matter jurisdiction. See Bernhardt v. L.A. Cnty.,
339 F.3d 920, 925 (9th Cir. 2003). Pathak’s filing
alleges that this Court lacks federal question jurisdiction
because Omaha Steaks did not prove that it holds registered
trademarks to support its trademark infringement and related
claims.
Federal
jurisdiction extends “to those cases in which a
well-pleaded complaint establishes either that [1] federal
[trademark] law creates the cause of action or [2] that the
plaintiff’s right to relief necessarily depends on
resolution of a substantial question of federal [trademark]
law, in that [federal trademark] law is a necessary element
of one of the well-pleaded claims.” Christianson v.
Colt Indus. Operating Corp., 486 U.S. 800, 808-09
(1988).
Here,
Omaha Steaks Complaint in Omaha Steaks I states
several claims arising under the Lanham Act. The issue of
whether Omaha Steaks should ultimately prevail on their
Lanham Act claims is not determinative of whether this Court
may exercise subject matter jurisdiction over the claims.
Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 523
U.S. 83, 89 (1998) (“It is firmly established in our
cases that the absence of a valid (as opposed to arguable)
cause of action does not implicate subject-matter
jurisdiction, i.e., the courts’ statutory or
constitutional power to adjudicate the case”);
see also Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 682 (1946)
(“Jurisdiction . . . is not defeated . . . by the
possibility that the averments might fail to state a cause of
action on which petitioners could actually recover.”).
Accordingly, Pashak fails to show a likelihood of success on
the merits of his claim that the Omaha ...