Austin v. Budget Rental Car, Inc.

Background

George Jarvis Austin applied to proceed without paying the filing fee, and the court granted that application. The court then conducted the required screening of his complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2). The screening order addressed allegations against Budget Rental Car, Inc., as well as Bank of America, Capital One, Mastercard, and Visa.

Claims against Budget

The court concluded that Austin’s allegations against Budget were frivolous for screening purposes. The court described Austin’s allegations as claiming that Budget stole cars and rented them to him, and that the cars’ owners repeatedly confronted and stalked him, including by cutting him off at high speeds, pointing guns at him, rear-ending him, and using a tow truck to take a car. The court found this narrative sufficiently incredible to suggest that it was not based on provable facts. As a result, the claims against Budget could not proceed at that time.

Claims against the financial-company defendants

Austin alleged that the financial-company defendants overbilled him, agreed to cancel his credit cards but did not do so, and violated his privacy rights. He asserted claims involving breach of contract, negligence, fraud, conversion, and tortious interference. The court found that these allegations did not provide enough factual detail to state a claim for relief, particularly the fraud claim, which requires specific details about who committed the alleged misconduct, what occurred, when and where it occurred, and how it occurred.

The court also found that Austin improperly grouped the defendants together without explaining what each separate company did. It said that this type of group pleading was insufficient even for the non-fraud claims. The court emphasized that Austin needed to provide more specific facts about each defendant’s conduct, not a longer complaint. It noted that the complaint, excluding exhibits, was already ninety-eight pages and contained lengthy quotations from judicial decisions and conclusory statements.

Federal jurisdiction

The court found that Austin had not adequately established federal subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning the federal court’s legal authority to hear the case. Austin invoked federal-question jurisdiction and diversity jurisdiction.

The court said that Austin’s listed claims—such as breach of contract, negligence, and fraud—were based on state law. Although he briefly suggested that some defendants may have violated federal privacy rules, he did not identify a claim based on those rules or explain why interpreting them was necessary to resolve his state-law claims. The court therefore found that federal-question jurisdiction was lacking at that time.

The court also found that Austin had not pleaded complete diversity of citizenship, which generally requires every plaintiff to be a citizen of a different state from every defendant, and an amount in controversy exceeding $75,000. Austin named five defendants but alleged citizenship information for only Budget, and the court found even Budget’s citizenship allegations incomplete because they did not identify the state where Budget had its principal place of business. Without citizenship information for the other defendants, Austin could not establish complete diversity.

Disposition

The court ordered that the complaint not be served and that summonses not be issued. It gave Austin leave to file an amended complaint by October 30, 2020, to correct the identified deficiencies. The order did not itself dismiss the case; it stated that if Austin failed to amend or filed another deficient complaint, the undersigned would recommend that a district judge dismiss the case. Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse signed the order.