Narang v. Narang
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:23-cv-00307
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Narang v. Narang, Judge Ryu granted the plaintiff’s fee waiver but ordered her to explain why the case should not be dismissed for lack of federal jurisdiction.
Kamal Narang, the pro se plaintiff, must explain whether the federal court has subject-matter jurisdiction. The ten named defendants are affected because the court is considering whether the action can proceed, but no dismissal was entered in this order.
What happened
In Narang v. Narang, the plaintiff sued ten individuals over what she described as fraud connected to a California family-court matter. The court granted her request to proceed without paying filing fees but questioned whether the federal court had authority to hear the case.
The court said the allegations appeared to involve state-law fraud, not a federal question. It also found that the plaintiff had not provided enough information to establish that the parties were citizens of different states, and that her allegations about the amount at stake were unexplained. The court ordered her to explain by April 20, 2023, why the case should not be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction; it did not dismiss the case in this order.
Chief Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu issued the order granting the fee application and requiring the written response. If the plaintiff did not respond on time, the court said it would recommend dismissal.
The detailed version
- Narang v. Narang · No. 4:23-cv-00307
- Haywood Gilliam
- Mar. 27, 2023
Background
Pro se plaintiff Kamal Narang filed a complaint and an application to proceed without paying filing fees. The complaint named Amarjit Narang and nine other individuals. As best as the court could determine, the allegations concerned a family-court matter in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda that the plaintiff claimed had become fraudulent. Later filings included court documents, handwritten notes, medical letters, and an addendum naming additional judges and court staff, but the court stated that the additional materials did not provide clear additional allegations.
Jurisdiction analysis
The court explained that federal district courts have limited subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning authority to hear a particular type of case. Federal-question jurisdiction requires a claim arising under the U.S. Constitution, federal law, or a treaty. Diversity jurisdiction requires complete diversity between the parties and more than $75,000 in controversy.
The court concluded that the plaintiff appeared to assert fraud claims, which arise under state law and therefore did not establish federal-question jurisdiction. For diversity jurisdiction, the plaintiff stated that she resided in Fremont, California and that Amarjit Narang resided in Union City, California, but she did not provide the citizenship or domicile of the parties. The court noted that, assuming the plaintiff and Amarjit Narang were both California citizens, complete diversity would be absent. The plaintiff appeared to allege $71,000,000 in controversy, but attributed unexplained amounts ranging from $3,000,000 to $15,000,000 to individual defendants.
Order
The court granted the plaintiff’s application to proceed without paying filing fees. Because it was not clear that the court had subject-matter jurisdiction, it ordered the plaintiff to file a written explanation by April 20, 2023, showing why the action should not be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The court stated that if she did not respond on time, it would recommend that the action be dismissed. The order did not itself dismiss the action. Chief Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu signed the order.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.