Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Guglielmino v. McKee Foods Corp. (9th Cir. - Oct. 9, 2007)

Can't get enough of civil procedure? Want to desperately know more about subject matter jurisdiction? If so, I'm sure you're not in my first-year civil procedure class, who's taking my midterm examination today.

But for everyone else, here's a good little opinion about what it takes to defeat removal in a diversity case by pleading an amount in controversy less than $75,000. And essentially a primer on how to carefully -- and with little or no relation to reality -- craft your complaint so that you get to be in whichever forum you want.

Plus it's got the neat little trick of being an O'Scannlain opinion with a separate concurrence by, you guessed it, O'Scannlain. The latter of which says, essentially, that he disagrees with his own opinion, but is bound by circuit precedent to do the wrong thing.

So if you're a procedure person, here's your daily dose.