Browne v. Hello Products LLC
- James Oetken
- 1:25-cv-05698
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Browne v. Hello Products LLC, Judge Torres ordered Browne to clarify the company’s citizenship or file a status letter.
Damany Browne must provide additional allegations about Hello Products LLC’s citizenship or file a status letter; the case could be dismissed if federal subject-matter jurisdiction is not properly alleged.
What happened
In Browne v. Hello Products LLC, Damany Browne brought a proposed class action against Hello Products LLC under the federal class-action jurisdiction statute.
The court explained that a limited liability company’s citizenship depends on the citizenship of all its members. Because the complaint did not provide that information, the court ordered Browne to amend the complaint or file a status letter by July 29, 2025.
Judge Torres warned that failure to properly establish federal subject-matter jurisdiction could lead to dismissal. The order did not dismiss the case.
The detailed version
- Browne v. Hello Products LLC · No. 1:25-cv-05698
- James Oetken
- July 15, 2025
Background
Damany Browne brought a proposed class action individually and on behalf of similarly situated people against Hello Products LLC. The complaint invoked the Class Action Fairness Act, a federal statute that can provide subject-matter jurisdiction over certain class actions.
Jurisdiction issue
The court noted that Hello Products LLC is alleged to be a limited liability company. For federal diversity jurisdiction, a limited liability company has the citizenship of each of its members. The complaint therefore needed to identify the citizenship of each natural-person member and, for any corporate member, the member’s place of incorporation and principal place of business.
Order
The court ordered Browne, by July 29, 2025, to amend the complaint to allege the citizenship of each of Hello Products LLC’s members or otherwise file a status letter. Judge Analisa Torres warned that failure to properly allege subject-matter jurisdiction could be grounds for dismissal. The order did not itself dismiss the case.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.