Here is another post from our junior blogger-in-training, Dean Balaes. He tackles one of the blog’s favorite subjects, removal before service to bring our readers the skinny on the first case where a plaintiff attempted to interpose a COVID-19 objection to snap removal, unsuccessfully. Since other plaintiffs might try the same thing, that makes
We have always puzzled over why pre-service removals are the least bit controversial. We are referring to what are known as “snap removals,” or removals to federal court before any forum defendant has been served. They are one way to comply with the removal statute’s forum defendant rule. It’s pretty simple: Even when you have
There’s a reason plaintiffs hate removal before service – “snap removal.” It has the potential to wreak havoc on their mass tort business models, which are largely based on confronting defendants with as many cases as possible in the worst jurisdictions possible. While federal courts are hardly perfect, they are usually better than the state-court
The DDL blog is no friend of the forum defendant rule – the exception to removability of diverse cases. You wouldn’t find us lamenting if it suddenly disappeared because it would take with it busloads of litigation tourists who would no longer have any incentive to sue a forum defendant – often a nominal defendant
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court entered an emergency COVID-19-related order on March 24, 2020 – copy here – that should be of interest to our clients who engage in removal before service (so-called “snap removal”). As we reported at the time, the Third Circuit upheld removal before service in Encompass Insurance Co. v. Stone Mansion
One way to remove a case to federal court that we haven’t discussed much is where the defendant is either a “federal officer” (not terribly relevant to our line of work), or else is a “person acting under that officer . . . for or relating to any act under color of such office.” 28
It is not often that we report on the creation of something new in the removal/remand area (ten years ago as to removal before service was one such moment), but today that is what we’re doing.
The decision is Markham v. Ethicon, Inc., C.A. No. 19-5464, ___ F. Supp.3d ___, 2020 WL ______, slip
As we’ve gleefully chronicled, recently the tide has been running distinctly in our favor on defendants being permitted to remove cases to federal court before plaintiffs – every one of them a non-resident litigation tourist – can serve a so-called “forum defendant” – that is, a completely diverse defendant that is also a resident
They are often called “snap removals” or “wrinkle removals.” They refer to cases removed to federal court before a forum defendant is served, which is one way to comply with the forum defendant rule in 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2). That statute says that a civil action otherwise removable on diversity jurisdiction may not be removed
We have written a number of times on CAFA, the Class Action Fairness Act. The decisions and subjects we have covered can be pretty technical and even numerical. After all, one of the central provisions of CAFA has a number in it: a “mass action” is one “in which monetary relied claims of 100