Usha Soujanya Karri v. Merrick B. Garland

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted March 22, 2023*
Decided May 11, 2023
Before
MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge
THOMAS L. KIRSCH II, Circuit Judge
DORIS L. PRYOR, Circuit Judge
No. 22-2363
USHA SOUJANYA KARRI,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
MERRICK B. GARLAND, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District
Court for the Northern District of
Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 22 C 55
Ronald A. Guzmán,
Judge.
O R D E R
Usha Karri suspected that her husband was orchestrating a wide-ranging
conspiracy to kill her, take her property, and gain custody over their two children. She
brought a sprawling civil-rights complaint against him and numerous others for their
roles in the alleged scheme to deprive her of due process. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. After
* We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and
record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not
significantly aid the court. F ED. R. A PP . P. 34(a)(2)(C).
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with F ED. R. APP . P. 32.1

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providing Karri two opportunities to amend, the district court dismissed her complaint
with prejudice because she failed to comply with pleading requirements and because
the relief she sought was foreclosed on abstention grounds. We affirm.
We recount the facts based on Karri’s complaint and appellate briefs. Stanard v.
Nygren, 658 F.3d 792, 794 (7th Cir. 2011). She alleged that her husband abused and
manipulated her for many years. As the abuse escalated, she initiated divorce
proceedings and sought custody of their children. After the divorce proceedings began,
her husband plotted to kill her and an uncle of hers. Her husband unwittingly contacted
an undercover federal agent posing as a hitman and was arrested. He was convicted,
after trial, of soliciting a crime of violence. See United States v. Bhogireddy, No. 1:19-cr-
00769 (N.D. Ill. May 27, 2021). He remains in federal custody, and his sentencing
hearing is scheduled to take place shortly.
Karri sees her husband’s attempt to hire a hitman as part of a broader plot to
deny her a fair divorce proceeding and cover up his wrongdoing. She says that he
bribed and conspired with state judges and private divorce attorneys to secure
favorable custody decisions and conceal his abuse. She also says that her husband
persuaded federal prosecutors and the Chicago police to cover up evidence of the
attempted hit and past incidents of sexual assault and abuse. For all of this, Karri sought
damages, an injunction ordering the U.S. Department of Justice and the Chicago police
to investigate the cover-up, and an injunction to stay her divorce proceedings until that
investigation ended.
The district court struck Karri’s complaint, which ran 363 pages, for not
complying with federal pleading requirements. The court explained that Rule 8(a)(2) of
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires a short and plain statement of the claim,
and her complaint clearly violated that rule. The court invited her to amend her
complaint but warned that it would strike any amended complaint if it were not
“significantly shorter.”
Karri submitted an amended complaint that was 194 pages, and the court struck
this complaint too. The amended complaint was “unwieldy,” and the court stated that it
could not discern what claims she was alleging and against whom. To help her amend
her complaint again, the court advised her that certain defendants named in the
complaint may be entitled to absolute immunity from suit and that she may not bring
unrelated claims against different defendants in the same case.

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No. 22-2363 Page 3
Karri then filed a 192-page, second amended complaint that repeated her due
process claims against the same defendants. The court described this filing as bulky and
unmanageable, and dismissed it under Rule 8(a). To the extent she sought injunctive
relief that would interfere with the ongoing state-court divorce proceeding, the court
found it appropriate to abstain from ruling on her due process claims. See J.B. v.
Woodard, 997 F.3d 714, 723 (7th Cir. 2021). The court ruled in the alternative that there
were other grounds for dismissal of the suit: absolute immunity barred her claims
against the state-court judges, the guardian ad litem, and the court-appointed
psychiatrist; she failed to state a plausible claim against the police officers, the private
attorneys, and her husband; and her conspiracy allegations were too conclusory to state
a claim.
Karri filed a motion for reconsideration that the court denied based on her failure
to identify any manifest error of law or fact.
On appeal, Karri generally challenges the district court’s dismissal of her
complaint, but we begin with her challenge to the court’s ruling on abstention, which,
as a non-merits threshold matter, we address first. See Meyers v. Oneida Tribe of Indians of
Wis., 836 F.3d 818, 823 (7th Cir. 2016). She argues that because she seeks an injunction
only to pause the state divorce proceedings to allow for an investigation of her
husband, the degree of federal intervention she seeks in the state-court case is minimal.
To the extent Karri seeks injunctive relief, the district court appropriately
abstained from ruling on her due process claim. In our recent decision in J.B., we held
that the principles underlying the abstention doctrines—the principles of comity,
equity, and federalism—require federal courts to abstain from cases that might interfere
with state domestic-court proceedings, even when none of the abstention doctrines is a
perfect fit. 997 F.3d at 722. Karri argues that she seeks not to intervene in the state
domestic-court case, but to spur an investigation into fraud and corruption by state
officials. But the injunctive relief she seeks would intrude into an ongoing state
domestic-court proceeding—an area of law traditionally reserved for the states—and in
such circumstances federal courts must stay on the sidelines. Id. at 722–23.
As for the court’s ruling that her complaint violated Rule 8(a)(2), she asserts that
she could not present a short and plain statement of her case because she needed to
describe the conspiracy and fraud of 11 separate defendants with particularity. But
Rule 8(a)(2)’s requirements to present a short and plain statement of the case do not
conflict with Rule 9(b)’s heightened pleading requirements for fraud and conspiracy: “it

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is possible to write a short statement narrating the claim—which is to say, the basic
grievance—even if Rule 9(b) requires supplemental particulars.” U.S. ex rel. Garst v.
Lockheed-Martin Corp., 328 F.3d 374, 376 (7th Cir. 2003). The court acted well within its
discretion to dismiss the remainder of Karri’s complaint for failing to conform with
Rule 8(a)(2).
AFFIRMED

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