Tucker v. International Proactive Security, Inc.
- Subramanian
- 1:23-cv-02946
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Tucker v. International Proactive Security, Judge Subramanian ordered plaintiffs to provide evidence about proposed defendants’ citizenship.
The order affected the plaintiffs and the three defendants they sought to join: Total Safety, Fisher Brothers Financial and Development Company LLC, and Fisher Brothers Management CO. LLC.
What happened
In Tucker v. International Proactive Security, the plaintiffs said that adding three defendants from the original state-court case would eliminate the federal court’s authority to hear the case based on the parties’ citizenship.
The court explained that a limited liability company’s citizenship depends on the citizenship of all its members, not simply its main business location or state of incorporation. The plaintiffs had not provided enough evidence showing the citizenship of the companies and their members.
Judge Arun Subramanian ordered the plaintiffs to submit competent evidence by September 20, 2023, showing that the proposed defendants are citizens of New York. The order did not decide whether the defendants would be joined or whether federal jurisdiction would ultimately exist.
The detailed version
- Tucker v. International Proactive Security, Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-02946
- Subramanian
- Sept. 15, 2023
Background
Plaintiffs argued that joining Total Safety, Fisher Brothers Financial and Development Company LLC, and Fisher Brothers Management CO. LLC—defendants from the original state-court action—would destroy the court’s diversity jurisdiction. Diversity jurisdiction is a basis for federal jurisdiction that depends on the parties’ citizenship.
Court’s analysis
The court noted that all three proposed defendants appeared to be limited liability companies. An LLC is a citizen of every state in which its members are citizens. Its citizenship is not determined by its principal place of business or place of incorporation. Therefore, the plaintiffs needed to identify the citizenship of each natural-person member and, for corporate members, the place of incorporation and principal place of business. They also needed to provide this information for any members that were themselves LLCs.
The court found that the plaintiffs had not provided proper evidence of the proposed defendants’ citizenship.
Order
The court ordered the plaintiffs to submit competent evidence by Wednesday, September 20, 2023, showing that the defendants they sought to join were citizens of New York. The opinion did not rule on whether those defendants would be joined or make a final determination about diversity jurisdiction.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.