Casebriefs » Intro. to Civil Procedure

Exam Question for Civil Procedure

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:59:56 +0000

Dan Yankee, a life-long resident of New York, comes to New Orleans for a Shriner’s convention. One night while imbibing in the Devil’s Brew, he tasted a local whiskey, Raging Cajun. Liking what he tasted, he bought a case of Raging Cajun to take back to New York. Upon his return to New York, Dan gave a bottle of Raging Cajun to his boss, Ben Bunkley, a citizen of New York. After work that evening, Bunkley decided to try the Raging Cajun and prepared himself a cocktail consisting of Raging Cajun and water. After three or four sips of his cocktail, Bunkley’s throat and stomach began having a severe burning sensation. He called his doctor who advised him to come to the hospital and bring the bottle of Raging Cajun with him. At the hospital it was determined that the bottle of Raging Cajun contained a high percent of acid. Bunkley was treated accordingly. He survived, but had to have part of his stomach removed and will talk in a law raspy voice the rest of his life. Bunkley’s doctor and hospital bills were in excess of $25,000. Raging Cajun is a product distilled by the Acadia Whiskey Company, a Louisiana corporation with its principal place of business in Louisiana. It has been licensed to do business in Alabama and has a warehouse for its products in that state. It distributes its products in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. You learn that about 25 per cent of Raging Cajun’s $1 million in annual sales is made to New Yorkers who either buy it in New Orleans and take the product back to their home state or who buy it from Acadia’s web site. In addition, Acadia Whiskey Company has $500,000 on deposit in a New York bank. Can a state court in New York exercise personal jurisdiction over Acadia Whiskey Company (AWC)?

Assume that the New York State has passed the following statute:

The courts of this state shall have personal jurisdiction over an individual, corporation or other entity who, in person or through an agent:

(1) transacts business within the state; or

(2) commits a tortious act within the state; or

(3) is personally served within the state; or
(4) owns property within the state.

Removal

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:58:18 +0000

As the party who initiates litigation, the plaintiff enjoys the privilege of choosing the forum that will adjudicate the dispute. But this right is not absolute. Congress has provided defendants in civil actions with a mechanism, called removal, to trump the plaintiff’s choice of a state court when the defendant prefers to have the case heard by a federal judge. Although unmentioned in the Constitution, removal has existed as a statutory phenomenon since the initial Judiciary Act of 1789.

Briefly put, a case that falls within the federal courts’ original jurisdiction, i.e., one that the plaintiff originally could have filed in federal court, can be removed there by the defendant(s). This general rule, however, is subject to a series of statutorily designated exceptions, some of which expand upon, and others of which restrict, the limits of original jurisdiction. Moreover, this procedure operates in only one direction. A defendant cannot remove a case from federal to state court. Neither can a defendant transfer a case from one state court to a court of a different state. The specific requirements for removal are set forth at 28 U.S.C.

§1441 and the procedural requirements governing this process are detailed at 28 U.S.C. §§1446 and 1447. We shall now explore several of the issues addressed and generated by these provisions.

Supplemental Jurisdiction

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:55:48 +0000

We already have seen, in the case of the statutory requirements of complete diversity (as interpreted by the Supreme Court) and a minimum amount in controversy (as expressly provided by Congress) for diversity actions, that Congress has not exercised the full measure of its constitutionally delegated authority to cede subject matter jurisdiction to the federal courts. Where Congress has chosen not to occupy the entire constitutionally sanctioned jurisdictional field, does or should this prevent the courts themselves from expanding upon their statutory jurisdiction? For example, suppose an employee who believes she has been the victim of sexual harassment brings a claim against her employer under the federal Civil Rights Act. Assuming that she and the employer are citizens of the same State, should she, nevertheless, be able, in that same lawsuit, to add a tort claim against the company for assault or intentional infliction of emotional distress? And what if she also wants to sue the supervisor who allegedly harassed her? To avoid filing two separate suits, can she add a tort claim against that supervisor in the action against the employer when she and the supervisor are not of diverse citizenship? Alternatively, if the employee is diverse from the company but not from the supervisor, can she bring tort claims for infliction of emotional distress against both of them in the same federal action? Finally, what would happen, jurisdictionally, if the employee sues only the employer and the employer seeks, in that same suit, to bring a state law claim for indemnity against the nondiverse offending supervisor?

The issue of whether the a federal trial court can assume jurisdiction over claims that do not fall within its “original” jurisdiction (provided for in either the general federal question and diversity provisions of 28 U.S.C. §§1331 and 1332 or the various other subject or party-specific provisions of the Judicial Code) has been the subject of a significant amount of judicial and legislative attention.

Diversity of Citizenship and Alienage

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:53:08 +0000

As Article III, §2 reflects, the Framers of the Constitution intended for federal courts not to be limited to hearing only cases that arise under federal law. In addition to authorizing Congress to confer jurisdiction over disputes involving the United States, Ambassadors, Ministers and Consuls, and over admirality and maritime cases, the Constitution contemplates that federal courts could adjudicate purely state law disputes if the adverse parties are either (a) citizens of different states within the Union, (b) a State and a citizen of another State, (c) two separate States, or (d) any State or a citizen of any State and any foreign sovereign or a citizen of any foreign sovereign. Congress subsequently exercised this constitutionally delegated authority to create such pockets of jurisdiction when it passed legislation, now found at 28 U.S.C. §1332, which provides for federal subject matter jurisdiction on the basis of diversity of citizenship and alienage.

In contrast to the justification for the creation of federal question jurisdiction, neither diversity nor alienage jurisdiction is grounded on either the purported comparative competence of federal judges or the need for uniformity of result. Rather, these two related bases of federal jurisdiction historically have been predicated on the notion that since out-of-staters (either from another State or another nation) could be victimized by the “home field advantage” enjoyed by forum citizens, they deserve the opportunity to bring their claims (or, in the case of removed actions, their defenses) before a federal judge whose appointment with life tenure renders her less amenable to local prejudices, pressures, and concerns than a state magistrate.

Federal Questions

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:47:12 +0000

Among the types of controversies that Article III, §2 of the U.S. Constitution permits Congress to assign to the federal courts are all cases “arising under” the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States. It was not until 1875, however, that Congress exercised this constitutional grant of jurisdiction-creating authority when it passed a statute giving federal courts the power to adjudicate cases “arising under” the federal constitution, laws and treaties on a permanent basis. Suits falling within this category are referred to as “federal question” cases. The present version of this legislative award of federal question jurisdiction is found at 28 U.S.C. §1331.

Does or should “arising under” mean that the federal courts can exercise jurisdiction over any case involving a question of federal law? For example, what if a retail computer supply store failed to pay for hundreds of copies of products that it had ordered and received from Microsoft, Inc. Microsoft files a complaint in federal district court, alleging that the supply store breached its contractual obligation to pay for the software, that this customer admitted ordering and receiving all of these products, but purported to justify its refusal to pay on the ground, which Microsoft vehemently denies, that Microsoft’s pricing policy is one of many monopolistic practices that violate federal antitrust laws. Does this case fall within the court’s “federal question” subject matter jurisdiction? Alternatively, suppose that the supply store got wind of Microsoft’s intention to sue and decided, instead, to force the issue by filing its own action in federal court seeking a declaratory judgment that Microsoft’s pricing policy violated the federal antitrust laws. Would this action fall within the court’s “federal question” jurisdiction? These, and other, important questions are addressed in the following case:

Adjudicative Power: Subject Matter Jurisdiction

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:44:46 +0000

As we know from the materials in the immediately preceding chapter, personal jurisdiction is one of two constituent elements of judicial, or adjudicative, jurisdiction. In order to effectively exercise adjudicative authority, courts must have power over the parties to the legal proceeding. But, as the Supreme Court affirmed in Pennoyer, every tribunal also must be “competent by its constitution—that is, by the law of its creation—to pass upon the subject-matter of the suit.” Consequently, any systematic jurisdictional inquiry also must encompass an evaluation of whether the court has been empowered to adjudicate the particular type of dispute that has been placed before it.

The fact that all courts have been delegated—by the law of their creation—a circumscribed scope of subject matter jurisdiction accords with our intuition about the structure and functioning of our judicial system. We would not expect, for example, that someone seeking a divorce or custody over a minor child would be able to institute such a proceeding in the same court used by someone who is defending herself against the issuance of a speeding ticket or seeking to probate a will. Nor would we anticipate that the loser in either of these proceedings would appeal that decision to the same court in which it was tried. And in a federal system with separate federal and state sovereignties, there needs to be some framework for distributing cases between these two systems. For reasons relating to both efficiency and expertise, among others, federal courts have a strictly limited jurisdiction; state courts by and large are not similarly limited, although their jurisdiction is defined by state constitutions and statutes.

Adjudicative Power: Personal Jurisdiction

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:29:53 +0000

Imagine that you were whiling away some free time one Saturday afternoon this semester surfing the Internet on your home computer. During your cyberspace travels, you happened upon an interesting web site that offered you the opportunity to obtain a free, fully functional version of a well known financial planning and check writing program. You were not required to fill out any annoying application form or in any way to identify yourself or your location in order to obtain the file. You simply had to click an icon on the screen and the sponsor of the web site would automatically deliver a file to your computer containing this financial program. You decided to take advantage of the offer and downloaded the program onto the hard drive of your computer. For several days thereafter, you utilized the program without incident until you discovered that the program contained a “virus” that wiped out all of the data contained on the hard drive of your computer, including all of your confidential financial information, irretrievable personal and business correspondence, as well as the class notes, case briefs, and outlines from all of your current law school classes.

Assume further that you decided to file suit against both the web site sponsor and the software manufacturer instead of seeking redress through some non-litigative mechanism such as arbitration or mediation. Where would you like to file the suit? Do you have any reason to believe that there is or should be any limit on the courts in which you could pursue this action? For example, could you bring suit in a federal and/or a state court? And within either of these judicial systems, would any court be at your disposal or would (should) there be additional limits on forum availability? Intuitively, you sense that you are not likely to be able to proceed with this action in a traffic court, a bankruptcy court, or a juvenile court. But why is that intuition correct? What does this suggest about the extent of a court’s adjudicative power other than that it is limited in some way?