Garcia Velez v. LSL Logistics LLC
- Jesse Furman
- 1:25-cv-01412
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Garcia Velez v. LSL Logistics, Judge Furman ordered defendants to identify LSL Logistics LLC’s members’ citizenship or face remand to state court.
The order directly affects LSL Logistics LLC and Cesar Omar Ortiz Ortiz, who must provide additional citizenship information to maintain the removal. It also affects Israel Garcia Velez and Lisa Vongnarath because the case may be remanded to the Supreme Court of New York, County of Bronx.
What happened
Garcia Velez v. LSL Logistics LLC concerns defendants’ effort to move the case from state court to federal court based on the parties’ citizenship. The judge had already found problems in defendants’ first filing and found that their amended filing still did not properly describe LSL Logistics LLC’s citizenship.
The court explained that a limited liability company is treated as a citizen of every state where its members are citizens. Defendants therefore had to identify each member and provide the required information for any business entity that was a member. Saying only that the members were probably not citizens of certain states was not enough.
Judge Jesse M. Furman gave defendants one last chance to correct the filing by March 10, 2025. If they could not truthfully show complete diversity of citizenship, the case would be sent back to the Supreme Court of New York, County of Bronx, without further notice.
The detailed version
- Garcia Velez v. LSL Logistics LLC · No. 1:25-cv-01412
- Jesse Furman
- Mar. 7, 2025
Background
Defendants LSL Logistics LLC and Cesar Omar Ortiz Ortiz removed the action to federal court, invoking diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. The court previously identified deficiencies in the notice of removal and ordered defendants to file an amended notice. Defendants filed that amended notice on March 6, 2025.
Jurisdictional Issue
The amended notice corrected one problem but still failed to properly allege the citizenship of LSL Logistics LLC. The court explained that an LLC has the citizenship of each of its members. A removal notice based on diversity jurisdiction must therefore identify the citizenship of each individual member and, for any corporate member, state its place of incorporation and principal place of business.
The court rejected defendants’ statement, made only “upon information and belief,” that the LLC’s members were not citizens of states where the removing party was a citizen. The court also stated that there was no basis for using that qualification because LSL Logistics LLC was itself the removing party.
Order
The court ordered defendants to amend the notice of removal by March 10, 2025, to allege the citizenship of every person or entity comprising LSL Logistics LLC, including the required corporate-member information. The court gave defendants one last chance to correct the jurisdictional allegations. If they could not truthfully allege complete diversity of citizenship by that deadline, the action would be remanded to the Supreme Court of New York, County of Bronx, without further notice.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.