Cathy Cardillo, a retired attorney, filed a federal 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 civil rights action against officials involved in the New Jersey fee arbitration process and a former client, alleging that her rights to procedural due process were violated by inadequate notice of the proceedings commenced against her. Plaintiff had retired from the practice of law and moved to Portugal where she lived when a former client filed a claim and the fee arbitration committee unsuccessfully endeavored to perfect service against her by certified mail. When she did not respond, the committee ruled in the arbitration proceedings, in her absence. Cardillo sought to have the arbitration reopened and unsuccessfully appealed the award to the DRB. Other efforts within the state judiciary to seek review or have the matter reconsidered were denied, and the Supreme Court clerk advised that, under the court rules, the DRB decision was unreviewable pursuant to Rule 1:20-16(d).

Despite the federal defendants’ failure to raise any jurisdictional challenge to the 1983 action, in Cardillo v. Clerk, Supreme Court of New Jersey, on March 7, 2018, Judge Freda Wolfson sua sponte inquired whether the District Court had jurisdiction to review a challenge to the final decision in the state fee arbitration process. As she pointed out, federal courts cannot consider non-jurisdictional issues without being satisfied they have subject matter jurisdiction, and the “Rooker-Feldman doctrine … [is] jurisdictional in nature,” footnote 3 at 4. In essence, under that doctrine, federal courts are not appellate courts that review final state court determinations and judgments.