Robertson v. Dale
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-02801
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Robertson v. Dale, Judge Swain dismissed Robertson’s legal-malpractice action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and denied leave to amend.
Dale Robertson’s legal-malpractice action was dismissed, and he was denied leave to amend and permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal. Conway Martindale and Martindale and Associates, PLLC were defendants in the dismissed action.
What happened
In Robertson v. Dale, Dale Robertson, representing himself, sued his former attorney, Conway Martindale, and what appeared to be Martindale’s law firm for alleged legal malpractice. Robertson sought $10 million in damages based on Martindale’s handling of an earlier case in federal court and a later case in state court.
The court treated the claims as state-law claims brought under diversity jurisdiction. Robertson alleged that both he and Martindale were New York citizens, so the parties were not citizens of different states as required for diversity jurisdiction. The court therefore dismissed the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and denied leave to amend because an amendment could not fix the problem.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Robertson permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal. The opinion does not decide whether the alleged legal malpractice occurred.
The detailed version
- Robertson v. Dale · No. 1:22-cv-02801
- Laura Swain
- May 16, 2022
Background
Dale Robertson, proceeding without a lawyer, filed a federal action against Conway Martindale, Esq., and Martindale and Associates, PLLC, which the complaint appeared to identify as Martindale’s law firm. Robertson invoked federal-question jurisdiction, but the court construed the complaint as asserting state-law legal-malpractice claims under diversity jurisdiction. He sought $10 million in damages.
Robertson alleged that he hired Martindale to represent him in a case brought in federal court and that Martindale’s conduct in that case was malpractice. He also alleged that, after the case was refiled in Bronx County Supreme Court, Martindale engaged in defective and frivolous motion practice that led to dismissal of Robertson’s complaint. Robertson quoted the state court’s findings about improper service, boilerplate legal standards, facts apparently taken from another case, and missing documents.
Jurisdiction
The court explained that federal-question jurisdiction requires a federal claim. Diversity jurisdiction requires the plaintiff and defendants to be citizens of different states, along with an amount in controversy exceeding $75,000. Robertson alleged that he was a New York citizen and that Martindale was also a New York citizen. Because Robertson and at least one defendant were citizens of the same state, complete diversity was absent. The court further reasoned that if Martindale was a member of the professional limited liability company, the law firm would also be a New York citizen. The court therefore concluded that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction.
Disposition
The court dismissed the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(h)(3). This was a jurisdictional dismissal; the court did not decide whether Martindale committed legal malpractice. The court also denied leave to amend because it concluded that the jurisdictional defect could not be cured by amendment.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Robertson permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.