Bobby Goldstein Productions, Inc.. v. TVi Media Group LLC
- P. Castel
- 1:20-cv-09576
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Bobby Goldstein Productions v. TVi Media Group, Judge Castel ordered jurisdictional details about TVi’s members and allowed complaint amendment before possible dismissal.
Bobby Goldstein Productions, Inc. must obtain and plead information about TVi Media Group LLC’s members’ citizenship. TVi Media Group LLC may be required to provide that information, and the action could be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction if the complaint is not amended.
What happened
Bobby Goldstein Productions, Inc. sued TVi Media Group LLC in federal court based on diversity jurisdiction. The complaint identified TVi as a New York limited liability company but did not state the citizenship of its members.
The court explained that an LLC’s citizenship depends on the citizenship of each member. It allowed Bobby Goldstein Productions to serve a limited interrogatory seeking that information and required the complaint to be amended to allege TVi’s citizenship.
Judge P. Castel ordered the interrogatory to be served within 21 days and the complaint to be amended within 45 days. The order states that the action will be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction if the complaint is not amended, but the opinion does not state a dismissal at this stage.
The detailed version
- Bobby Goldstein Productions, Inc.. v. TVi Media Group LLC · No. 1:20-cv-09576
- P. Castel
- Nov. 16, 2020
Background
Bobby Goldstein Productions, Inc. brought the action against TVi Media Group LLC, invoking diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. The complaint described TVi as a New York limited liability company with its principal place of business in New York, but it did not identify the citizenship of TVi’s members.
Jurisdictional requirement
The court stated that a complaint relying on diversity jurisdiction must allege the citizenship of the natural-person members of an LLC. If a corporation is an LLC member, the complaint must allege the corporation’s state of incorporation and principal place of business. The court cited the rule that an LLC has the citizenship of each of its members.
Order
Within 21 days of the order, Bobby Goldstein Productions may serve TVi with an interrogatory—a written question used to obtain information in litigation—limited to identifying the citizenship of all natural persons who are TVi members and, if a corporation is a member, the corporation’s state of incorporation and principal place of business. The opinion’s text is incomplete after stating that the defendant shall have 14 days, so the precise obligation or deadline associated with that sentence is unclear.
Within 45 days of the order, Bobby Goldstein Productions must amend its complaint to allege TVi’s citizenship, or the action will be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The order does not state that the action was dismissed at that time. Judge P. Castel signed the order on November 16, 2020.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.