Tesla v. Pelinkovic
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:24-cv-08901
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Tesla v. Pelinkovic, Judge Caproni ordered a new complaint identifying Crotona Avenue Builders’ members and citizenship and required appearances and a revised case plan.
Matthew Tesla must file the required amended complaint and case-management materials. Elvira Pelinkovic, Ljumni Pelinkovic, and Crotona Avenue Builders, LLC must file notices of appearance before joining the required filing; Drgut Pelinkovic’s pending motion may be applied to the new complaint.
What happened
In Matthew Tesla v. Drgut Pelinkovic, Elvira Pelinkovic, Ljumni Pelinkovic, and Crotona Avenue Builders, LLC, the court found that the amended complaint did not provide information needed to determine whether the court could hear the case based on the parties’ citizenship. The complaint identified Crotona Avenue Builders as a New York limited liability company with its main business location in Bronx County, New York, but did not identify its members or their citizenship.
The court also noted that Elvira Pelinkovic, Ljumni Pelinkovic, and Crotona Avenue Builders had waived service but had not filed notices showing that they had formally appeared. A joint case-management filing submitted by Matthew Tesla and Drgut Pelinkovic did not show that the other defendants had joined it.
Judge Caproni ordered Tesla to file a second amended complaint by March 19, 2025, identifying every member of Crotona Avenue Builders and each member’s citizenship, along with a redlined copy. The court also required the parties to file a compliant joint case-management plan, required the three other defendants to file notices of appearance first, and said Drgut Pelinkovic’s existing motion to dismiss would generally be treated as applying to the new complaint.
The detailed version
- Tesla v. Pelinkovic · No. 1:24-cv-08901
- Valerie Caproni
- Mar. 14, 2025
Background
Matthew Tesla filed an amended complaint on February 7, 2025. The complaint alleged that the court had subject-matter jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship, meaning that the parties were citizens of different jurisdictions in a way that could permit a federal court to hear the dispute.
The amended complaint added Elvira Pelinkovic, Ljumni Pelinkovic, and Crotona Avenue Builders, LLC as defendants. It alleged that Crotona Avenue Builders was a limited liability company organized under New York law with its principal place of business in Bronx County, New York. The court explained that a limited liability company has the citizenship of its members. Therefore, a complaint relying on diversity jurisdiction must identify the company’s members and allege the citizenship of each member. The amended complaint did not provide that information.
Drgut Pelinkovic filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint on February 13, 2025, but the motion did not rely on lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Tesla and Drgut Pelinkovic later filed a joint letter and proposed case-management plan. Although the court had required a revised filing on behalf of all parties, the March 13 filing did not indicate whether Elvira Pelinkovic, Ljumni Pelinkovic, or Crotona Avenue Builders had joined it. The court also noted that those three defendants had waived service but that no notices of appearance had been filed for them.
Orders
The court ordered Tesla to file a second amended complaint no later than Wednesday, March 19, 2025. The new complaint must include allegations identifying every member of Crotona Avenue Builders and the citizenship of every member. Tesla must also file a redline comparing the second amended complaint with the amended complaint and confirming that no other changes were made.
The court stated that, once the second amended complaint was filed, it would construe Drgut Pelinkovic’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint as a motion to dismiss the second amended complaint, unless Drgut Pelinkovic notified the court by letter no later than March 21, 2025, that this would be inappropriate.
The court separately ordered the parties to file a revised joint letter and proposed case-management plan by March 19, 2025, on behalf of all parties. Elvira Pelinkovic, Ljumni Pelinkovic, and Crotona Avenue Builders were required to file notices of appearance before that filing. Tesla was also ordered to send a copy of the order to those defendants. Judge Valerie Caproni did not decide the merits of the underlying dispute in this order.
Disposition
The order required a second amended complaint and additional case-management filings. It did not grant or deny the pending motion to dismiss.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.