Kippes v. John Does 1-25
- Susan Van Keulen
- 5:25-cv-03616
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 5
In Kippes v. John Does 1-25, Judge Van Keulen ordered jurisdictional clarification and denied without prejudice the subpoena request.
Patrick Kippes’s case was placed on hold while he was required to establish subject matter jurisdiction. The unidentified Doe defendants were not affected by a merits ruling, and the subpoena request was denied without prejudice.
What happened
Patrick Kippes sued unidentified defendants, alleging that he was the victim of a cryptocurrency scam. He asked for permission to serve subpoenas on third parties before the required discovery conference to learn the defendants’ identities.
Judge Susan Van Keulen found that the complaint did not adequately show diversity jurisdiction. It did not properly allege Kippes’s citizenship, the Doe defendants’ citizenship, or that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000 without counting interest and costs.
Judge Van Keulen ordered Kippes to file a response or amended complaint by June 11, 2025, establishing subject matter jurisdiction. The court denied the subpoena application without prejudice, allowing Kippes to file it again after jurisdiction is established; the court did not decide the underlying scam claims.
The detailed version
- Kippes v. John Does 1-25 · No. 5:25-cv-03616
- Susan Van Keulen
- May 28, 2025
Background
Patrick Kippes’s complaint alleges that he was the victim of a cryptocurrency scam. The defendants are identified as “John Does 1-25” because Kippes says he does not know their identities. Kippes asked for permission to serve subpoenas on various third parties before the Rule 26(f) conference, a required early meeting about discovery, so he could try to identify the Doe defendants.
Subject-Matter Jurisdiction
The complaint relied only on diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). Diversity jurisdiction generally requires more than $75,000 to be at issue, excluding interest and costs, and requires the parties to have the citizenship required by the statute.
The court found three problems with the jurisdictional allegations:
1. Kippes’s citizenship: The complaint said that Kippes was a “resident” of California. The court explained that residence alone does not adequately allege citizenship for diversity purposes.
2. The Doe defendants’ citizenship: The complaint said the unknown defendants were “believed to be located in” China, but it provided no factual basis for that belief. The complaint also stated elsewhere that the defendants’ location was unknown. The court concluded that these allegations did not adequately establish the defendants’ citizenship. The court acknowledged that a plaintiff may sometimes plead jurisdictional facts based on information and belief when the necessary information is not reasonably available, but found that Kippes had not provided sufficient facts supporting his belief here.
3. Amount in controversy: The complaint alleged that the amount in controversy was “more than $75,000,” but it also sought interest and costs. The court ordered Kippes to clarify that the amount exceeding $75,000 does not include interest and costs.
Orders
The court concluded that the complaint did not sufficiently establish diversity jurisdiction. It ordered Kippes to file either a response to the order or an amended complaint by June 11, 2025, showing that the court has subject matter jurisdiction. If he failed to file a required document by that deadline, or failed to establish jurisdiction in it, the court stated that the case would be reassigned to a district judge with a recommendation that it be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
The court denied without prejudice Kippes’s application for permission to serve third-party subpoenas before the Rule 26(f) conference. The order allows Kippes to refile that application once subject matter jurisdiction is established. The court did not rule on the merits of the allegations concerning the cryptocurrency scam.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.