Omeda v. Jannah Inc.
- Jesse Furman
- 1:22-cv-04603
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Omeda v. Jannah Inc., Judge Furman struck the corporate defendants’ answer and ordered them to obtain lawyers, while postponing the initial pretrial conference.
Jannah Inc. and 260 Brook Ave Inc. must obtain licensed counsel to continue appearing in the federal case. Salman Ashraf and Uzma Arain’s answer was stricken as to those corporate defendants, and the initial pretrial conference was postponed.
What happened
In Omeda v. Jannah Inc., Salman Ashraf and Uzma Arain filed an answer on behalf of all defendants while representing themselves. The court had previously warned that corporate defendants Jannah Inc. and 260 Brook Ave Inc. could appear in federal court only through licensed counsel.
The court struck the answer as to Jannah Inc. and 260 Brook Ave Inc. because corporations cannot represent themselves and Ashraf and Arain did not appear to be lawyers admitted to practice in the court. The court ordered the corporations to obtain counsel by September 28, 2022. If they did not, the plaintiff was directed to seek default judgment against them by October 5, 2022.
Judge Furman also postponed the initial pretrial conference from September 13 to October 13, 2022, at 3:30 p.m. The order addressed representation and scheduling; it did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Omeda v. Jannah Inc. · No. 1:22-cv-04603
- Jesse Furman
- Sept. 7, 2022
Background
The court had previously warned Salman Ashraf and Uzma Arain that corporate entities, including Jannah Inc. and 260 Brook Ave Inc., may appear in federal court only through licensed counsel. Despite that warning, Ashraf and Arain, appearing without lawyers, filed an answer to the complaint on behalf of all defendants.
Ruling on the Answer
The court struck the answer as to Jannah Inc. and 260 Brook Ave Inc., referred to together as the Corporate Defendants. The court explained that corporations may not proceed without counsel in federal court and that Ashraf and Arain did not appear to be counsel or members of the court’s bar.
The Corporate Defendants were ordered to obtain counsel no later than September 28, 2022. If they failed to do so, the plaintiff was directed to file a motion for default judgment against them by October 5, 2022. The court did not itself enter default judgment in this order.
Scheduling and Effect
The court postponed the initial pretrial conference from September 13, 2022, to October 13, 2022, at 3:30 p.m. The Clerk was directed to mail the order to the defendants. The order was procedural and did not decide the merits of the plaintiff’s claims.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.