Ajna Living, LLC v. Digital Accessories TCM Ltd.
- P. Castel
- 1:22-cv-03127
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Ajna Living v. Digital Accessories, Judge P. Castel ordered citizenship details to be supplied or the diversity case would be dismissed.
Ajna Living, LLC and Highfive Brands Operations, LLC must provide additional citizenship allegations and may question the defendants about their citizenship; Digital Accessories TCM Ltd. and TCM International Trade Ltd. must respond to any permitted interrogatory.
What happened
Ajna Living, LLC v. Digital Accessories TCM Ltd. is a case in which the plaintiffs relied on diversity of citizenship to establish federal jurisdiction. The complaint did not provide the required citizenship information for the defendant corporations or the members of the plaintiff limited liability companies.
The plaintiffs may serve the defendants with a narrowly focused question about the defendants’ citizenship within seven days, and the defendants must respond within seven days. The plaintiffs must amend the complaint within 30 days to provide the required information, or the action will be dismissed for lack of federal subject-matter jurisdiction.
Judge P. Castel issued this order to address the jurisdiction problem at the beginning of the case. The order did not decide the parties’ underlying dispute.
The detailed version
- Ajna Living, LLC v. Digital Accessories TCM Ltd. · No. 1:22-cv-03127
- P. Castel
- Apr. 19, 2022
Background
The plaintiffs, Ajna Living, LLC and Highfive Brands Operations, LLC, brought the action under the court’s diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction, a form of federal jurisdiction based on the citizenship of opposing parties. The defendants are Digital Accessories TCM Ltd. and TCM International Trade Ltd.
Jurisdictional Defect
The court explained that a complaint invoking diversity jurisdiction must identify the citizenship of all members of a limited liability company. If an LLC member is a corporation, the complaint must identify that corporation’s state or country of incorporation and principal place of business. A complaint naming corporations must also allege each corporation’s place of incorporation and principal place of business.
The court found that the complaint did not allege the citizenship of the two defendant corporations. It also did not allege the citizenship of the plaintiff LLCs’ members, including the required information for any corporate members.
Order
Within seven days of the order, the plaintiffs may serve the defendants with an interrogatory—a written question—limited to the citizenship of the defendant corporations. The defendants must respond within seven days after receiving it.
Within 30 days of the order, the plaintiffs must amend the complaint to allege the citizenship of the defendant corporations and each constituent member of the plaintiff LLCs. The order states that the action will be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction if the plaintiffs do not do so. The court did not rule on the underlying claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.