Wescott v. SparkLabs IoT Accelerator Fund, L.P.
- Maxine Chesney
- 3:21-cv-09200
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Wescott v. SparkLabs IoT Accelerator Fund, Judge Chesney declined to adopt a recommendation and dismissed the complaint with leave to amend for inadequate jurisdiction allegations.
Carl A. Wescott’s federal lawsuit was dismissed with leave to amend; the court also directed the clerk to correct his contact information and send him specified orders.
What happened
Wescott v. SparkLabs IoT Accelerator Fund involved Carl A. Wescott’s state-law claims against two individuals and three entities. A magistrate judge had recommended dismissing the case because Wescott, who was representing himself, had not updated his address after court mail was returned undeliverable.
Judge Chesney found that the court’s mail had been sent to an address Wescott had not provided in this case. The court therefore directed the clerk to correct Wescott’s address and phone number and to send him copies of the relevant orders.
The court also found that the complaint did not adequately show diversity jurisdiction because it did not identify the citizenship of the defendant entities’ partners or members. Judge Chesney declined to adopt the recommendation and dismissed the complaint with leave to amend by September 19, 2022.
The detailed version
- Wescott v. SparkLabs IoT Accelerator Fund, L.P. · No. 3:21-cv-09200
- Maxine Chesney
- Aug. 25, 2022
Background
Carl A. Wescott brought state-law claims against Charles Reed Anderson, Bernard Moon, SparkLabs IoT Accelerator Fund, L.P., SparkLabs Management, LLC, and SparkLabs Connex. He asserted that the court had diversity jurisdiction, which generally requires more than $75,000 in controversy and complete diversity—meaning that each defendant must be a citizen of a different state or country from the plaintiff.
A magistrate judge recommended dismissal for failure to prosecute after Wescott did not appear at a case-management conference, an order directing him to explain his absence was returned as undeliverable, and more than four months passed without a filing identifying his current address. Wescott was representing himself.
Address issue
The district court declined to adopt that recommendation because the order returned as undeliverable had not been sent to the address Wescott provided in his complaint. The court directed the clerk to correct Wescott’s address and phone number to reflect the information in the complaint. It also directed the clerk to send Wescott the order and the order reassigning the case.
Jurisdiction ruling
The court concluded that the complaint did not allege enough facts to establish subject-matter jurisdiction. The court found that Wescott had sufficiently alleged the amount in controversy by claiming that the defendants failed to pay $265,650.68 in wages. It also stated that he appeared to have sufficiently alleged that he was an Arizona citizen and that Anderson and Moon were citizens of Singapore and California, respectively.
The allegations about the entity defendants were insufficient. For SparkLabs IoT, Wescott did not identify the general and limited partners or their citizenships. For SparkLabs Management, he did not identify the owners or members or their citizenships. For SparkLabs Connex, he alleged that its domicile was unknown and did not identify its partners or their citizenships. The court also noted Wescott’s allegation that SparkLabs Connex had the same main partners as SparkLabs IoT.
Disposition
The court dismissed the complaint with leave to amend. It ordered that, if Wescott wished to continue pursuing his claims in federal court, he had to file a First Amended Complaint by September 19, 2022, alleging facts sufficient to establish the court’s jurisdiction. Judge Maxine M. Chesney did not reach the merits of Wescott’s state-law claims.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.