Kaplan v. Dotdash Meredith Corporation
- Andrew Carter
- 1:21-cv-10950
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Kaplan v. Dotdash Meredith, Judge Moses denied a stay but withdrew the mediation referral while jurisdiction remained unresolved.
The order affected Brittany Kaplan and the defendants by requiring them to address diversity jurisdiction while withdrawing the automatic mediation referral.
What happened
In Kaplan v. Dotdash Meredith Corporation, the parties disputed whether the court had diversity jurisdiction because they disagreed about Dotdash Meredith’s headquarters. Plaintiff also expected to receive permission from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to sue and planned to add claims under Title VII, a federal employment law.
The parties jointly asked the court to pause the case, postpone the initial conference, and temporarily avoid deciding the jurisdiction issue. They also asked to be excused from automatic mediation so they could conduct discovery first.
Judge Barbara C. Moses denied the request for a stay and directed the parties to propose a schedule for briefing diversity jurisdiction. She granted the request to the extent that the mediation referral was withdrawn.
The detailed version
- Kaplan v. Dotdash Meredith Corporation · No. 1:21-cv-10950
- Andrew Carter
- Mar. 17, 2022
Background
Plaintiff Brittany Kaplan and the defendants jointly submitted a letter application after their conference about managing the case. Kaplan alleged that the defendants were headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. The defendants asserted that they were headquartered in New York, New York. The court noted that Dotdash Meredith’s website stated that its headquarters were in New York.
The parties recognized that if the defendants were headquartered in New York, diversity jurisdiction could be defeated. Kaplan had filed administrative charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and expected to receive a notice permitting her to sue. The parties said they intended to amend the complaint to add claims under Title VII, which they stated would provide federal-question jurisdiction.
Requests
The parties asked the court to stay all proceedings and move the initial conference, then scheduled for April 12, 2022, to 30 days after the defendants responded to an amended complaint. They also asked the court to withdraw the referral to automatic mediation so they could conduct at least some discovery before mediation.
Court’s reasoning and ruling
The court explained that subject-matter jurisdiction is the court’s legal authority to hear a case. If that authority is absent, the court must dismiss the case and cannot temporarily set the jurisdiction issue aside. The parties therefore could not waive or postpone the jurisdiction question merely by agreement. The court also noted that a dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction would be without prejudice.
The court denied the letter application insofar as the parties requested a stay. It directed the parties to propose, in their pre-conference statement due April 5, 2022, a schedule for briefing the diversity-jurisdiction question. The court granted the letter application to the extent that the mediation referral was withdrawn. The opinion did not decide whether diversity jurisdiction existed or whether the anticipated Title VII claims would ultimately be added.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.