Rosa v. The Charitable Trucking Co.
- Jesse Furman
- 1:21-cv-03153
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Rosa v. The Charitable Trucking Co., Judge Furman required proof of citizenship before deciding whether to return the case to state court.
The plaintiff and defendants in the case, particularly the individual defendant whose citizenship had not yet been established, were affected by the court’s order requiring additional jurisdictional proof.
What happened
In Rosa v. The Charitable Trucking Co., the federal court examined whether it had authority to hear a case that had been moved from state court.
The court found that the amount at stake exceeded $75,000. But it concluded that the defendants had not yet shown that the parties were citizens of different states, because they had not established the individual defendant’s citizenship rather than merely residence.
Judge Furman ordered the defendants to provide that information by affidavit by May 27, 2021, and allowed the plaintiff to respond by June 2, 2021. The court said it would return the case to the New York state court if the defendants failed to establish complete diversity or failed to file anything by the deadline.
The detailed version
- Rosa v. The Charitable Trucking Co. · No. 1:21-cv-03153
- Jesse Furman
- May 20, 2021
Background
The case was filed in the Supreme Court of New York, Bronx County, and the defendants removed it to federal court. On April 28, 2021, the court ordered the defendants to explain why the case should not be sent back to state court for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning the federal court’s legal authority to hear the dispute.
The plaintiff argued that removal was improper because the defendants had not submitted proof of the individual defendant’s state of citizenship, as opposed to residence. The opinion does not identify that individual defendant’s citizenship.
Jurisdictional Analysis
Federal diversity jurisdiction generally requires both an amount in controversy exceeding $75,000 and complete diversity of citizenship, meaning that no plaintiff shares state citizenship with any defendant.
The court held that the amount-in-controversy requirement was satisfied. Plaintiff’s counsel stated that the plaintiff’s damages were expected to exceed $75,000 by a wide margin, and the court concluded that the amount exceeded $75,000 when the case was removed.
The court agreed that an individual’s citizenship for diversity purposes depends on domicile, meaning the person’s true fixed home and principal establishment, together with the intent to return there when absent. The relevant domicile is the party’s domicile when the complaint was filed. The court concluded, however, that the defendants had not yet established complete diversity of citizenship.
Order
The court ordered the defendants to confirm the individual defendant’s citizenship by affidavit no later than May 27, 2021. The plaintiff could respond by June 2, 2021. The court stated that, if the defendants failed to establish complete diversity or failed to file anything by the deadline, it would remand the case—return it to the state court—for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice.
The order did not remand the case at that time and did not decide the underlying merits of the dispute.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.