Envision Highland, LLC v. Bank of America N.A.
- Jesse Furman
- 1:22-cv-05872
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Envision Highland v. Bank of America, Judge Furman ordered citizenship allegations to be amended or warned of dismissal for lack of jurisdiction.
Envision Highland, LLC was required to amend its complaint by July 19, 2022, to provide citizenship allegations concerning the parties and the members of Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, LLC and Rialto Capital Advisors, LLC. The order warned that the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction if complete diversity could not truthfully be alleged.
What happened
Envision Highland, LLC sued Bank of America, N.A. and three other defendants, claiming federal jurisdiction because the parties were citizens of different states.
Judge Furman found that the complaint did not properly allege the citizenship of the members of two defendant limited liability companies or the citizenship of the parties based only on their business addresses. He ordered Envision Highland to amend the complaint by July 19, 2022.
Judge Furman stated that if Envision Highland could not truthfully allege complete diversity of citizenship by that date, the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice.
The detailed version
- Envision Highland, LLC v. Bank of America N.A. · No. 1:22-cv-05872
- Jesse Furman
- July 12, 2022
Background
Envision Highland, LLC brought the action against Bank of America, N.A., Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, LLC, and Rialto Capital Advisors, LLC. The complaint invoked diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332.
The complaint alleged that Envision Highland was a citizen of Maryland. It alleged that Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, LLC was a citizen of Delaware and New York, and that Rialto Capital Advisors, LLC was a citizen of Delaware and Florida. The opinion states that these allegations were insufficient because a limited liability company is treated as a citizen of every state in which its members are citizens. A complaint relying on diversity jurisdiction must identify the citizenship of the people and entities comprising each limited liability company, including the citizenship of members that are themselves limited liability companies. The complaint also alleged business addresses rather than the parties’ states of citizenship.
Order
The court ordered Envision Highland, on or before July 19, 2022, to amend its complaint to allege the citizenship of each person or entity comprising Berkadia Commercial Mortgage, LLC and Rialto Capital Advisors, LLC, as well as the citizenship of all individual parties. The court further stated that if Envision Highland could not truthfully allege complete diversity of citizenship by that date, the complaint would be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice.
This was a jurisdictional pleading order; the opinion did not decide the underlying claims. Judge Jesse M. Furman signed the order on July 12, 2022.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.