Pacelli v. NR West 56th Street LLC
- Jesse Furman
- 1:25-cv-08700
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Patrick Pacelli v. NR West 56th Street LLC, Judge Furman ordered Pacelli to amend his complaint to establish diversity jurisdiction.
Patrick Pacelli and the defendants, particularly the defendant limited liability companies whose members’ citizenship was not alleged. The case may proceed only if Pacelli properly establishes federal diversity jurisdiction.
What happened
In Patrick Pacelli v. NR West 56th Street LLC et al., Patrick Pacelli sued the defendants in federal court based on diversity of citizenship, but his complaint did not properly establish that jurisdiction.
The court said Pacelli alleged the parties’ residences rather than their citizenship. He also did not identify the citizenship of the members of the defendant limited liability companies or provide the required citizenship information for entities within their ownership structures.
Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered Pacelli to file an amended complaint by October 30, 2025, properly stating every party’s citizenship. If he does not do so, the court will dismiss the case without prejudice and without further notice.
The detailed version
- Pacelli v. NR West 56th Street LLC · No. 1:25-cv-08700
- Jesse Furman
- Oct. 23, 2025
Background
Patrick Pacelli filed a complaint invoking diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. The court reviewed the complaint and found that it did not adequately establish subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning the court’s authority to hear the case.
Jurisdictional deficiencies
The complaint identified the parties’ states of residence, but residence alone does not establish citizenship for diversity-jurisdiction purposes. Citizenship generally depends on a person’s domicile.
The complaint also failed to allege the citizenship of the defendant limited liability companies based on their members. An LLC is treated as a citizen of every state in which its members are citizens. The complaint therefore needed to identify the citizenship of each individual or entity comprising the LLCs. If an LLC member was itself an LLC, the complaint needed to continue identifying the citizenship of that LLC’s members. For corporate members, it needed to state the place of incorporation and principal place of business. The court also said that listing the LLCs’ business addresses was not enough.
Order
The court ordered Pacelli to file an amended complaint no later than October 30, 2025, properly alleging the citizenship of every party, including the constituent persons or entities of the defendant LLCs and all individual parties. If Pacelli does not file an amended complaint establishing subject-matter jurisdiction by that date, the court will dismiss the case without prejudice and without further notice. Judge Jesse M. Furman did not dismiss the case in this order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.