Pyne v. CKR Law LLP
- John Cronan
- 1:24-cv-02912
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Pyne v. CKR Law, Judge Cronan ordered plaintiffs to amend their complaint to establish diversity jurisdiction.
Keith E. Pyne and Enrico Desiata must amend their complaint to provide CKR Law LLP’s partners’ citizenship or otherwise establish diversity jurisdiction; CKR Law LLP, Jeffrey Rinde, and the action may be affected if jurisdiction is not established.
What happened
In Pyne v. CKR Law LLP, Keith E. Pyne and Enrico Desiata sued CKR Law LLP and Jeffrey Rinde. They claimed federal jurisdiction based on the parties’ citizenship and an amount in controversy of at least $750,000.
The complaint identified the citizenship of the individual parties but did not identify the citizenship of CKR’s partners. Because a limited liability partnership is treated as a citizen of every state where its partners are citizens, that information was needed to determine whether diversity jurisdiction existed. The court also noted that the jurisdictional amount threshold is $75,000, not $750,000.
Judge John P. Cronan ordered the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint identifying each CKR partner’s citizenship by May 16, 2024. He warned that if they did not amend or otherwise properly establish jurisdiction, the court may dismiss the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice. The order did not decide the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims.
The detailed version
- Pyne v. CKR Law LLP · No. 1:24-cv-02912
- John Cronan
- May 9, 2024
Background
Keith E. Pyne and Enrico Desiata filed the complaint on April 17, 2024, against CKR Law LLP and Jeffrey Rinde. The plaintiffs invoked diversity-of-citizenship jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a), alleging that the parties were citizens of the relevant states or countries and that the amount in controversy was at least $750,000.
The complaint alleged that Pyne was a citizen of Arizona; Desiata was a citizen of Italy and a permanent resident of Panama; Rinde was a citizen of New York; and CKR was a limited liability partnership authorized under California law with its principal office in New York. The complaint did not allege the citizenship of CKR’s partners.
Jurisdictional issue
The court explained that an LLP is treated as a citizen of every state of which its partners are citizens. Therefore, identifying CKR’s partners’ citizenship was necessary to determine whether complete diversity existed. The court also noted that the amount-in-controversy threshold for diversity jurisdiction is $75,000, not $750,000. The court said it was not entirely clear why the complaint used the word “respectively” when describing citizenship and why it alleged the higher amount.
Order
Judge John P. Cronan ordered the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint alleging the citizenship of each of CKR’s partners by May 16, 2024. If the plaintiffs failed to amend or otherwise properly establish subject-matter jurisdiction under § 1332(a), the court stated that it may dismiss the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction without further notice. The order did not resolve the underlying claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.