Tower 570 Company LP v. Affiliated FM Insurance Company
- Jesse Furman
- 1:20-cv-00799
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Tower 570 v. Affiliated FM, Judge Furman ordered a citizenship amendment and warned that failure could lead to dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.
Tower 570 Company LP, including any constituent estate identified as a member of the plaintiff; the order also concerns the defendants because the court’s jurisdiction over the case depends on complete diversity of citizenship.
What happened
Tower 570 Company LP filed an amended complaint after the court identified problems with how it alleged the plaintiff’s citizenship. The amended complaint described the citizenship of an estate’s representative, but not the citizenship of the person who had died.
The court explained that, for diversity jurisdiction, an estate representative has the citizenship of the deceased person. The court therefore required Tower 570 to provide the citizenship of the deceased person connected to any estate that was a member of the plaintiff.
Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered Tower 570 to amend its complaint by July 21, 2020. He stated that if Tower 570 could not truthfully allege complete diversity, the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice; the order did not itself dismiss the complaint.
The detailed version
- Tower 570 Company LP v. Affiliated FM Insurance Company · No. 1:20-cv-00799
- Jesse Furman
- July 14, 2020
Background
Tower 570 Company LP filed an amended complaint on July 13, 2020, in response to an earlier order identifying deficiencies in its allegations about citizenship. The court’s diversity jurisdiction requires Tower 570 to plead, and ultimately prove, complete diversity of citizenship.
The amended complaint alleged the citizenship of the legal representative of an estate that was a member of Tower 570, but did not allege the citizenship of the decedent. The court cited 28 U.S.C. § 1332(c)(2), which provides that an estate’s legal representative is treated as having the citizenship of the decedent for diversity purposes.
Ruling
The court ordered Tower 570 to amend its complaint by July 21, 2020, to allege the citizenship of the decedent of any constituent estate that was a member of Tower 570. The court stated that if Tower 570 could not truthfully allege complete diversity by that deadline, the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice. The order did not itself dismiss the complaint or decide the underlying dispute with Affiliated FM Insurance Company.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.