Diggs v. Securitas Securities Services USA, Inc.

Background

Ashley Diggs, proceeding without a lawyer, sued Securitas Securities Services USA, Inc. in state court. Securitas removed the case to federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, which generally applies when the parties are citizens of different states and more than $75,000 is at stake. Diggs moved to remand, or return, the case to Santa Clara Superior Court. Securitas moved to dismiss the complaint.

Motion to Remand

Diggs argued that remand was required because Securitas was a defendant from the forum state and because Securitas’s principal place of business was in California. The court noted that Diggs appeared to acknowledge that she was a California citizen and had provided a California address in the complaint. But she offered no support for the assertion that Securitas’s principal place of business was in California.

Securitas submitted that it was incorporated under Delaware law and that its principal place of business was in Parsippany, New Jersey. It stated that its high-level officers directed and coordinated the company’s core activities and administrative functions from New Jersey, which it described as the company’s central place of direction and control. Because Diggs did not file a reply disputing those representations, the court had no reason to believe they were inaccurate. The court therefore denied the motion to remand.

Motion to Dismiss

The court applied the standard for dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which asks whether the complaint contains enough factual detail to state a legally plausible claim. Although courts interpret complaints filed without a lawyer less strictly, they cannot supply essential facts that the complaint does not allege.

Diggs alleged that, approximately from July 2019 to July 2020, she was subjected to unlawful employment practices, a hostile environment, retaliation, sexual harassment, and different treatment because of her race. The court understood her complaint as attempting to assert claims for hostile work environment or sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and discriminatory retaliation.

The court found that the complaint did not provide facts supporting those claims. It did not allege that Diggs was Securitas’s employee, identify her position, identify a protected class to which she belonged, explain whether she was performing her job competently, or describe facts suggesting that any termination or other adverse action resulted from racial discrimination. The court also noted that it could not consider material outside the complaint when evaluating the motion to dismiss. The court therefore granted the motion to dismiss.

Disposition

The court denied the motion to remand and granted the motion to dismiss. It did not determine that amendment would be futile, so it allowed Diggs to file an amended complaint by November 7, 2022. The court stated that failure to file by that deadline could result in dismissal of the action without further permission to amend, and that any amended complaint would be dismissed if it did not correct the deficiencies identified in the order.