Doe v. Alexander
- Katherine Failla
- 1:25-cv-02111
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
Doe v. Alexander: Judge Failla granted the defendant’s requests to withdraw his motions and scheduled a telephone conference about the proposed remand motion.
The order affects Jane Doe and the defendant by withdrawing the defendant’s identified motions and setting a telephone pre-motion conference about the proposed motion to remand; it does not decide whether the case will remain in federal court.
What happened
In Doe v. Alexander, the defendant had removed the case to federal court based on claimed diversity of citizenship and sought to dismiss the complaint. Plaintiff Jane Doe disputed whether diversity existed and said she planned to ask the court to send the case back to state court.
The defendant’s proposed dismissal arguments included that the claims were time-barred or preempted by state law. Plaintiff also argued that the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law applied to her claims and that the claims against the company defendants were valid. The court did not decide those arguments.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla granted the defendant’s requests to withdraw his motion to dismiss and his request for a pre-motion conference. She converted the scheduled initial pretrial conference into a telephone pre-motion conference addressing the parties’ issues, including Plaintiff’s proposed motion to remand, and directed the clerk to terminate the motions at docket entries 5 and 9.
The detailed version
- Doe v. Alexander · No. 1:25-cv-02111
- Katherine Failla
- Mar. 26, 2025
Background
Defendant removed the case from state court to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on March 13, 2025, asserting diversity jurisdiction. Plaintiff Jane Doe agreed that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000 but disputed whether the parties were citizens of different states. Plaintiff’s lawyer stated that Defendant was incarcerated in New York and that Defendant had submitted an affidavit asserting permanent residence in Florida. The letter also stated that Defendant owned properties in New York and argued that the removal was unsupported by sufficient evidence of domicile.
Defendant sought permission to file a motion to dismiss. The stated grounds were that Plaintiff’s claims were time-barred and/or preempted by state law. Plaintiff said she intended to file a motion to remand, which would ask the federal court to return the case to state court, before the court addressed any motion to dismiss.
Parties’ arguments about the statute
Plaintiff’s response also addressed Defendant’s anticipated argument that the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law could not apply retroactively. Plaintiff argued that amendments to the law expanded potential liability beyond the individual perpetrator and revived certain claims whose limitations periods had expired. Plaintiff contended that the complaint was not time-barred and that the claims against the company defendants were valid. These arguments appeared in the parties’ submissions; the order did not resolve them.
Court’s action
The court reviewed Defendant’s requests to withdraw his motion to dismiss and to withdraw his request for a pre-motion conference. The court granted both requests. It converted the initial pretrial conference scheduled for April 16, 2025, into a telephone pre-motion conference concerning the parties’ issues, including Plaintiff’s proposed motion to remand. The court directed the clerk to terminate the pending motions at docket entries 5 and 9. The order did not grant or deny the proposed motion to remand and did not decide the parties’ statute-of-limitations, retroactivity, preemption, or jurisdiction arguments.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.