Ebanks v. Brown
- Jesse Furman
- 1:25-cv-01181
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Ebanks v. Brown, Judge Furman ordered defendants to identify each party’s citizenship or face remand without prejudice.
Andre L. Brown and Perfect Timing Transport LLC must provide the required citizenship allegations by February 20, 2025; otherwise, the case will be remanded without prejudice.
What happened
In Ebanks v. Brown, the defendants removed the case to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, which depends on the parties being citizens of different states.
The court found that the defendants had alleged only some parties’ states of residence, not their citizenship. Residence alone does not establish citizenship for diversity jurisdiction.
Judge Furman ordered the defendants to file an amended notice of removal by February 20, 2025, properly alleging each party’s citizenship. If they did not establish subject-matter jurisdiction by then, the court said it would remand the case without prejudice and without further notice.
The detailed version
- Ebanks v. Brown · No. 1:25-cv-01181
- Jesse Furman
- Feb. 13, 2025
Background
On February 10, 2025, Andre L. Brown and Perfect Timing Transport LLC filed a notice of removal, asking the federal court to take the case from the court where it had originally been filed. They relied on diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, which generally requires complete diversity of citizenship among the parties and satisfaction of the applicable amount requirement.
Jurisdictional problem
The defendants stated that there was complete diversity of citizenship, but the notice alleged only some parties’ states of residence. The court explained that residence is not enough to establish citizenship for diversity-jurisdiction purposes. A party’s citizenship depends on domicile, meaning the person’s or entity’s legally relevant home for jurisdictional purposes. The opinion does not identify the parties’ citizenships.
Order
The court ordered the defendants to file an amended notice of removal no later than February 20, 2025, properly alleging the citizenship of every party. If they did not file that amended notice and establish the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, the court stated that it would remand the case without prejudice and without further notice to any party. The order did not decide the underlying claims.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.