Civil Procedure Class Notes
Monday,
we will meet at
We
started looking at amount of controversy yesterday. Over time, the amount in controversy
requirement had escalated.
Injunctions
and aggregation
Injunctions
don’t ask for a dollar value. How do you
assign a dollar value to determine whether the value is great enough to get you
into federal court?
1. What’s the
value of the injunction to the plaintiff?
2. What’s the
cost to the defendant to comply with the injunction?
3. What’s value
or cost to the party that invoked federal jurisdiction (i.e. the plaintiff
filing or the defendant removing)?
4. Any of the
above! If you get any of #1-#3, you’re
good to go.
How
can you aggregate plaintiffs’ claims? Can
you add up claims to get over the $75,000 benchmark? It’s confusing, but there are some basic
rules that you can use.
·
Single plaintiffs can aggregate against single defendants. It doesn’t matter if your various claims are
unrelated.
·
Multiple plaintiffs can’t aggregate unless you come
under the exception below.
·
The Rule of Zahn says that in a diversity
class action, every class member must have a claim in excess of $75,000,
unless courts find that § 1367 changes this
rule.
·
If a counterclaim is compulsory, it can be heard regardless
of the amount. If the counterclaim is
permissive, it needs to have an independent jurisdictional basis.
Hypotheticals on amount in controversy
You
must plead in excess of $75,000, or else your case can get booted out of
federal court.
If
there’s a counterclaim that is permissive rather than compulsory,
that is, one that could be brought separately (e.g. in state court), then you’d
need an “independent basis for jurisdiction”.
A
single plaintiff can aggregate unrelated claims against a single defendant to
satisfy the amount in controversy requirement.
Does this make sense? Don’t
worry about whether it makes sense. Just
go with it.
Two
plaintiffs can’t aggregate if their claims are separate and distinct.
The
Supreme Court was going to look at a case that would resolve the issue of two plaintiffs
with related claims, but they changed their mind.
Why
diversity jurisdiction?
The
courts and Congress have tried to limit diversity jurisdiction in three
different ways. Congress could
conceivably do away with diversity jurisdiction altogether.
We
keep diversity jurisdiction around for reasons of tradition as much as
anything. Also, litigating in federal
court is desirable, and lawyers like having the option of getting their cases
into federal court through diversity jurisdiction.
Supplemental
jurisdiction – getting more jurisdiction than you thought
To
this point, we’ve looked at several ways the courts and Congress have tried to
limit the number of cases getting into federal courts. Now, we’re going to take things that wouldn’t
ordinarily be in federal court and see if we can find a basis for getting them
in. This now done by statute, but in
order to understand the statute, we need to look at the case that the statute
attempts to codify.
Gibbs
sues the United Mine Workers. He had a
federal claim and a state tort claim. He
has a “mixed body” of claims.
How
come we don’t have diversity jurisdiction?
Where is the union from? It’s
from where all its members are from.
Can
a federal court have jurisdiction over a claim with non-diverse parties? Where should this suit be brought, if not in federal
court? It could be brought in state
court.
What
does the Supreme Court tell us? The
answer is that yes, the federal court can hear this case and the state
law claim inside it.
What
rationale does the Court use to justify federal jurisdiction in this case? What is it about this “clump” of federal and
state claims that makes it constitutional for the federal courts to hear it?
Gibbs is to supplemental jurisdiction as Pennoyer is to personal jurisdiction. This is a very important case that you have
to remember forever. It gives us
a phrase that we will see over and over.
Gibbs is a constitutional case. Gibbs
says that Article III’s delegation of federal judicial power relates to cases
and controversies rather than claims.
In Mottley, the Supreme
Court interpreted the language in regard to “arising under” jurisdiction and
gave us the well-pleaded complaint rule.
In Mas, the Supreme Court interpreted the constitution to give us
the complete diversity rule.
Brennan says: “The state
and federal claims must derive from a common nucleus of operative fact.”
This
phrase is not very helpful in itself, but as we go over its
applications, it begins to take on a life of its own. We look at claims and think about whether we
would normally expect to try them together in the same judicial proceeding. Does it make sense to try these claims
together? Does it make a sensible trial
package?
What
details might you look at to make such a determination?
·
We want to consider efficiency. This is an efficiency rule.
·
We want to make sure a jury won’t get confused by
working with two different bodies of law at once.
Courts
will have some discretion in deciding whether to hear these claims.
These
concepts are old and have been subsumed by § 1367. We need to know the old stuff because there
are a lot of old lawyers and judges out there who only know the old way of
doing things.
Pendant
jurisdiction
If
you have federal question jurisdiction to anchor the case, and you have an
additional state law claim, then, provided that the claims come out of a “common
nucleus of operative fact”, then you can hear them together. This is essentially the situation in Gibbs.
Ancillary
jurisdiction
If
you have diversity jurisdiction, will it cover additional claims over other
parties? Let’s say you have a good federal
diversity claim, but the defendant makes a third-party claim against a
third-party defendant who is not diverse.
Pendant
party jurisdiction
If
you have federal question jurisdiction, can you make state law claims against
additional parties if the claims come out of a “common nucleus of operative
fact”.
But
the good thing is that all three of these types of jurisdiction now fall under § 1367 and the
contemporary concept of supplemental jurisdiction.
28 U.S.C. § 1367
takes the concepts from Gibbs
and tries to apply them to provide for the same kind of supplemental jurisdiction.
§ 1367(a) is the
grant of supplemental jurisdiction, which is essentially a codification of Gibbs.
We
will start with sub-section (b), the exceptions, on Monday in our double class.