Tetsubayashi v. Indeed, Inc.
- Richard Seeborg
- 3:25-cv-05049
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 7
In Tetsubayashi v. Indeed, Judge Seeborg granted remand because added defendant Davis destroyed diversity and denied Indeed’s arbitration motion as moot.
Dédé Tetsubayashi, Indeed, Inc., and LaFawn Davis; the action returns to Alameda County Superior Court, and Indeed’s arbitration motion was not decided on its merits.
What happened
In Tetsubayashi v. Indeed, Inc., Dédé Tetsubayashi sued Indeed, Inc. in state court over alleged workplace misconduct and later added LaFawn Davis as a defendant. The amended complaint added emotional-distress claims against Davis and alleged that she lived in Oakland, California.
The court concluded that Davis’s addition properly destroyed the parties’ complete diversity required for federal jurisdiction. It found that the claims against Davis appeared valid, that Tetsubayashi had not delayed unreasonably, and that refusing to add Davis could force her to bring related disputes separately or give up potential claims.
Judge Richard Seeborg granted the motion to remand and sent the case back to Alameda County Superior Court. He denied Indeed’s motion to compel arbitration as moot because the court did not need to decide that motion.
The detailed version
- Tetsubayashi v. Indeed, Inc. · No. 3:25-cv-05049
- Richard Seeborg
- Sept. 5, 2025
Background
Dédé Tetsubayashi filed a state-court complaint based on alleged misconduct while working at Indeed, Inc. between June 2022 and August 2024. The complaint asserted state-law claims under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act and California Labor Code section 1102.5 concerning alleged race, gender, and disability discrimination and harassment. Indeed removed the case to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, which generally requires complete diversity between the parties and an amount in controversy exceeding $75,000.
Tetsubayashi then filed a first amended complaint naming LaFawn Davis and adding claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress against Indeed and Davis. The amended complaint alleged, on information and belief, that Davis was a resident of Oakland, California. The opinion states that Tetsubayashi did not dispute that the amount in controversy exceeded $75,000 or that Indeed had Delaware and Texas residencies.
Remand analysis
The court considered whether to permit the post-removal addition of a defendant whose presence would destroy subject-matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15 and 28 U.S.C. section 1447(e). The court examined whether Davis was needed for adjudication, whether the claims could become time-barred, whether Tetsubayashi delayed, whether the joinder was intended solely to defeat federal jurisdiction, whether the claims appeared valid, and whether denying joinder would prejudice Tetsubayashi.
The court found that Davis was more than tangentially related to the claims because the complaint alleged harassing conduct by Davis, whom the opinion describes as Tetsubayashi’s executive peer and later manager at Indeed. The court also noted that Indeed might not always be liable for an employee’s conduct under California law, and excluding Davis could lead to separate and redundant actions.
The court found no unreasonable delay because Tetsubayashi amended the pleading seventeen days after removal and within the twenty-one-day period allowed after Indeed’s answer. It also concluded that adding Davis was not motivated solely by a desire to defeat federal jurisdiction because the amendment permitted Tetsubayashi to assert new emotional-distress claims against Davis. Applying section 1447(e)’s standard, the court determined that the intentional- and negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claims appeared valid. It further found that denying joinder could prejudice Tetsubayashi by forcing her to choose between redundant litigation and foregoing potential claims against Davis, while discovery had not yet begun.
Ruling
The court permitted Davis’s joinder, held that her presence destroyed diversity jurisdiction, and granted Tetsubayashi’s motion to remand. The action was remanded to Alameda County Superior Court. Because the federal court no longer had jurisdiction and did not need to reach the substance of Indeed’s request for arbitration, it denied the motion to compel arbitration as moot.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.