Osorio v. Hol-Mac Corporation

Background

Mayra Osorio brought a wrongful-death action concerning the death of her husband, Edwin Gomez-Zarate, in an accident involving a forklift allegedly owned, designed, manufactured, or distributed by Quality Corporation. The opinion states that Hol-Mac Corporation was allegedly Quality’s successor-in-interest. Osorio filed the action in Contra Costa Superior Court on August 9, 2019. The complaint alleged that Osorio was a resident of Livermore, California, and that Hol-Mac was a Mississippi corporation and Quality was a Colorado corporation. The complaint did not allege Osorio’s domicile.

Hol-Mac removed the action to federal court on January 10, 2020, relying on diversity jurisdiction. Diversity jurisdiction generally requires complete diversity of citizenship between the parties and more than $75,000 in dispute. Osorio moved to remand, arguing that Hol-Mac’s removal was untimely because Hol-Mac knew, or should have known, that the case was removable more than 30 days earlier. At the hearing, Osorio stipulated to the dismissal without prejudice of Quality.

The parties’ arguments

Osorio argued that the complaint’s allegation that she lived in Livermore should have alerted Hol-Mac that her domicile was California. She also argued that documents informally produced by her counsel on November 13, 2019—including a Cal-OSHA investigation report, a sheriff’s report, and a coroner’s report—established her California domicile and triggered the 30-day removal period.

Hol-Mac argued that residence does not establish domicile in the Ninth Circuit. It also argued that the informally produced reports did not sufficiently establish domicile, that removing based on those reports could have exposed it to sanctions, and that the reports were unauthenticated hearsay rather than evidence sufficient to establish diversity.

Court’s analysis

The court explained that residence and domicile are different. Domicile is a person’s permanent home, where the person lives with the intention of remaining or returning. In the Ninth Circuit, residence is not automatically treated as evidence of domicile. Courts instead consider objective facts, including residence, voting information, property, family location, employment, driver’s licenses, vehicle registration, and taxes, without allowing any one factor to control.

The court held that the complaint’s allegation of residence alone was not enough to establish Osorio’s citizenship for diversity purposes. But the court found that the complaint and the documents provided on November 13, 2019, together established Osorio’s California domicile under the totality of the circumstances. The documents showed that Osorio and her husband lived together in Livermore in 2017, that her husband had a California driver’s license, and that he had worked for an employer with a Livermore business address for the three years before his death. Because Osorio alleged two years later that she lived in Livermore, the court concluded that these objective facts showed she was domiciled in California when the lawsuit was filed.

The court also concluded that the reports qualified as “other paper” under the federal removal statute and triggered the 30-day removal period. It rejected Hol-Mac’s argument that the reports did not qualify because they were passed along by counsel rather than created by Osorio. The court also rejected the argument that the reports could not trigger the period because they were not admissible evidence. Although the reports lacked affidavits establishing authenticity or business-record status, they were supplied by Osorio’s counsel and had indications of authenticity. Nothing in the record suggested that the relevant factual findings were unreliable.

Disposition

The court granted Osorio’s motion to remand. It ordered that the case be remanded to the Superior Court for the County of Contra Costa and instructed the clerk to close the federal court file.