Pabon v. Penske Logistics Inc. Component Carrier LLC
- Valerie Caproni
- 1:23-cv-08276
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Pabon v. Penske Logistics, Judge Caproni ordered defendants to correct diversity-jurisdiction deficiencies or face remand to state court.
The defendants must file an amended notice of removal by October 4, 2023. If they do not cure the identified deficiency, the case will be remanded to state court for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
What happened
Felix A. Pabon initially filed this case in New York state court, and the defendants later removed it to federal court, claiming diversity jurisdiction, which generally depends on the parties' citizenship.
The court explained that a limited partnership has the citizenship of all its general and limited partners. The removal notice identified the relevant defendant as a Delaware limited partnership with its principal place of business in Berks County, Pennsylvania, but did not state the citizenship of its members.
In Pabon v. Penske Logistics Inc. Component Carrier LLC, Judge Valerie Caproni ordered the defendants to file an amended notice of removal by October 4, 2023, correcting the deficiency. Otherwise, the matter would be remanded to state court for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
The detailed version
- Pabon v. Penske Logistics Inc. Component Carrier LLC · No. 1:23-cv-08276
- Valerie Caproni
- Sept. 20, 2023
Background
Felix A. Pabon initially filed the action in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Bronx, on July 27, 2023. On September 19, 2023, the defendants filed a notice removing the case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The defendants asserted that the federal court had diversity jurisdiction.
Jurisdictional Deficiency
The court stated that, for diversity jurisdiction, a limited partnership has the citizenship of each of its general and limited partners. A removal notice based on diversity must therefore identify the citizenship of natural-person members and the incorporation and principal-place-of-business information for corporate members, including the members of any member entities that are themselves limited partnerships or limited liability companies.
The notice of removal alleged that Defendant Penske Truck Leasing Co. L.P. i/s/h/a Penske Logistics Inc. Component Carrier, LLC was a limited partnership organized under Delaware law and had its principal place of business in Berks County, Pennsylvania. But neither the complaint nor the notice of removal alleged the citizenship of that defendant's members.
Order
The court ordered the defendants to file an amended notice of removal by October 4, 2023, curing the identified deficiencies. The court stated that the matter would otherwise be remanded to state court for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The order did not decide the underlying claims or their merits.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.