Constellation NewEnergy Inc. v. West Side Manhattan Real Estate LLC
- Jesse Furman
- 1:20-cv-08448
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Constellation NewEnergy v. West Side Manhattan, Judge Furman ordered citizenship details added or warned the complaint would be dismissed.
Constellation NewEnergy Inc. must provide the missing citizenship information about the defendant LLC’s members and other relevant parties by November 13, 2020, or the complaint will be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
What happened
Constellation NewEnergy Inc. sued West Side Manhattan Real Estate LLC in federal court, relying on diversity of citizenship. The complaint appeared to identify the plaintiff as a Delaware citizen and the defendant as a New York citizen, but it did not provide the required citizenship details for the defendant LLC’s members and other entities.
The court explained that an LLC is treated as a citizen of every state where its members are citizens. A diversity complaint must therefore identify the citizenship of each person or entity making up an LLC, including the citizenship information for any corporate or LLC members.
Judge Jesse M. Furman ordered Constellation to amend its complaint by November 13, 2020, to provide the required information. The court stated that if Constellation could not truthfully allege complete diversity, the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice.
The detailed version
- Constellation NewEnergy Inc. v. West Side Manhattan Real Estate LLC · No. 1:20-cv-08448
- Jesse Furman
- Oct. 13, 2020
Background
Constellation NewEnergy Inc. brought the action against West Side Manhattan Real Estate LLC and invoked federal subject-matter jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. The complaint appeared to allege that Constellation was a citizen of Delaware and that West Side Manhattan was a citizen of New York.
Jurisdictional Defect
The court explained that a limited liability company is a citizen of every state of which its members are citizens. A complaint based on diversity jurisdiction must therefore allege the citizenship of the natural-person members of an LLC, the place of incorporation and principal place of business of corporate members, and the citizenship of members that are themselves LLCs. The court found that the complaint did not provide this information.
Order
The court ordered Constellation to amend its complaint by November 13, 2020, to allege the citizenship of each person or entity comprising the defendant LLC and the citizenship of all individual parties. The court stated that, if Constellation could not truthfully allege complete diversity by that date, the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice to either party.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.