As mentioned last week, we’re having an odd moment in our practice when virtually all our cases involve feverish battles over whether the cases belong in state or federal court.  Care to guess which side of the argument we’re adopting? (Hint: we prefer judges who will actually pay attention to dispositive motions and might even occasionally grant them.)

Speaking of odd, today’s case, Riddley v. Coopersurgical, Inc., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 215830, 2025 WL 3062996 (N.D. Texas Nov. 3, 2025), reached an odd result in an odd way. It might even be a first as far as we can tell. We hope not to see its like again. 

Riddley is yet another case in which the plaintiff sought to recover for injuries she allegedly sustained from the use of Filshie Clips, a federally regulated tubal ligation device.  The plaintiff filed her lawsuit in Texas state court against the manufacturer, the manufacturer’s parent company, and a distributor. The defendants removed the case to federal court based on diversity. After discovery closed, the plaintiff and the defendants filed motions for summary judgment. So far, so normal.

And then the magistrate-judge in Riddley sua sponte remanded an obviously diverse case at the summary judgment stage because there was no summary judgment-quality evidence of one defendant’s citizenship.  The evidence of citizenship – that the defendant in question “admitted” (in its answer) to diverse citizenship –supposedly wasn’t good enough at the summary judgment stage.  The decision brands that admission as a “stipulation between the parties” that could not establish diversity/subject matter jurisdiction.  “At the summary judgment stage particularly, the requirement is for evidence, and there is no record evidence in this case on which a reasonable jury could base a finding as to [the defendant’s] citizenship.” 

Since admissions are used routinely to establish all sorts of facts at trial, this ruling does not seem to make much sense. Nor, in light of the admission, does citizenship seem to be a “disputed” issue for purposes of Rule 56. Think about how much oxygen is expended by judges imploring the parties to agree on things. And now here, where the parties agree on something about as basic as can be, the court blows a raspberry at the parties and points them to the exit sign.

To our eyes, the magistrate-judge was standing hard on ceremony. The court emphasized how the scheduling orders directed the parties to Fifth Circuit precedents on subject matter jurisdiction and instructed the parties that any brief supporting summary judgment must be accompanied by “evidence sufficient to support a reasonable jury finding on any relevant jurisdictional facts.”  It seems as if the magistrate-judge wanted to teach the parties a lesson – a very hard lesson.  Another judge might have, after the scolding, permitted the parties to rectify the technical error/omission.  Not this magistrate-judge.  The case was remanded to state court.  Adios. 

But no matter how wrong we might think the Riddley decision is, it suggests a potential trap for the unwary.  After reading this blogpost, you are no longer unwary.