Bank of America, N.A. v. Third Avenue Imaging LLC
- Vincent Briccetti
- 7:21-cv-05201
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Bank of America v. Third Avenue Imaging, Judge Briccetti ordered citizenship details to determine whether diversity jurisdiction exists.
Bank of America, N.A.’s counsel and the defendants whose citizenship information the court required: Third Avenue Imaging, LLC; Unique Third Ave, LLC; Unique Imaging Services, LLC; and Distinguished Diagnostic Imaging, P.C.
What happened
Bank of America, N.A. sued Third Avenue Imaging, LLC, three other business entities, and Joel Reisman, claiming federal jurisdiction based on the parties’ citizenship. The complaint described places of business for the business entities but did not provide all information needed to establish their citizenship.
The court explained that diversity jurisdiction requires every plaintiff to be a citizen of a different state from every defendant. For limited liability companies, that requires identifying every member and each member’s citizenship. For a professional corporation, the court must know its state of incorporation and principal place of business.
Judge Briccetti ordered Bank of America’s lawyer to submit a detailed letter by June 24, 2021, explaining the citizenship of the three limited liability company defendants and Distinguished Diagnostic Imaging, P.C. The order did not decide whether the court ultimately has jurisdiction or address the underlying dispute.
The detailed version
- Bank of America, N.A. v. Third Avenue Imaging LLC · No. 7:21-cv-05201
- Vincent Briccetti
- June 15, 2021
Background
Bank of America, N.A. brought the action under the court’s diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction, a form of federal jurisdiction that generally requires every plaintiff to be a citizen of a different state from every defendant. The defendants are Third Avenue Imaging, LLC; Unique Third Ave, LLC; Unique Imaging Services, LLC; Distinguished Diagnostic Imaging, P.C.; and Joel Reisman.
Jurisdictional issue
The complaint alleged that Third Avenue Imaging, LLC, Unique Third Ave, LLC, and Unique Imaging Services, LLC each had a “place of business” in Monroe, New York. But an LLC’s citizenship is based on the citizenship of each of its individual or entity members, and the complaint did not identify those members or their citizenships. The complaint alleged that Distinguished Diagnostic Imaging, P.C. maintained a “place of business” in Chappaqua, New York, but did not identify its state of incorporation or principal place of business. The court therefore lacked the information needed to determine whether complete diversity existed.
Order
The court ordered plaintiff’s counsel to submit, by June 24, 2021, a detailed letter explaining the citizenship of the three LLC defendants and Distinguished Diagnostic Imaging, P.C., including the citizenship of the LLC members if applicable. The opinion refers to Third Avenue Imaging, LLC as “TAI” in the final directive, although it earlier refers to that defendant as “TAT.” The order did not decide the underlying claims and did not make a final determination that subject matter jurisdiction either exists or does not exist.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.