Urena v. United Natural Foods Inc.
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:23-cv-01030
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Urena v. United Natural Foods, Inc., Judge Schofield remanded the matter because removal did not establish the parties’ citizenship.
Georgina Urena and the defendants were affected because the federal court sent the matter back to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Bronx County, and closed the federal case.
What happened
In Urena v. United Natural Foods, Inc., Defendants removed the case from New York state court to federal court. Their removal notice did not state the citizenship of Plaintiff or Defendants at the required times.
The court explained that the removal papers and state-court record did not establish whether the parties were completely diverse, a requirement for this type of federal jurisdiction. The court therefore did not reach the underlying dispute.
Judge Schofield ordered that the matter be remanded to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Bronx County, and directed the federal clerk to close the case.
The detailed version
- Urena v. United Natural Foods Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-01030
- Lorna Schofield
- Feb. 9, 2023
Background
Defendants filed a notice of removal on February 7, 2023, seeking to move the case from state court to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The notice did not allege the citizenship of Plaintiff Georgina Urena or Defendants at both the time the state-court action was filed and the time of removal.
Reasoning
The court explained that it may remand a case on its own for a procedural defect within 30 days after a notice of removal is filed, and may remand at any time if the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, meaning authority to hear the case. The notice of removal and the underlying state-court record did not establish whether the parties were completely diverse, so the record did not establish the basis for diversity jurisdiction.
Disposition
The court ordered that the matter be remanded to the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Bronx County. It directed the Clerk of Court to mail a certified copy of the Opinion and Order to that court and to close the federal case. The order did not decide the underlying dispute.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.