Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. v. Universal American Mortgage Company, LLC

Filing 33

ORDER denying 15 Defendant's Motion To Enforce Compliance With Court Order and To Transfer Venue. By Judge Robert E. Blackburn on 6/3/13.(mjgsl, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
Judge Robert E. Blackburn
Civil Action No. 13-cv-00091-REB-KMT
LEHMAN BROTHERS HOLDINGS INC.,
Plaintiff,
v.
UNIVERSAL AMERICAN MORTGAGE COMPANY,
Defendant.

ORDER DENYING DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO ENFORCE
COMPLIANCE WITH COURT ORDER AND TO TRANSFER VENUE
Blackburn, J.
The matter before me is Defendant’s Motion To Enforce Compliance With
Court Order and To Transfer Venue [#15],1 filed February 22, 2013. I deny the
motion.
This lawsuit is one of eight separate actions,2 each associated with a separate
residential mortgage loan sold by defendant to plaintiff. Originally, plaintiff filed a single
action for breach of contract implicating all the loans in the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida. The district judge assigned to that case
subsequently severed all but one of the claims and dismissed the remainder without
prejudice to refile. This lawsuit represents one of those severed claims, all seven of

1

“[#15]” is an example of the convention I use to identify the docket number assigned to a
specific paper by the court’s electronic case filing and management system (CM/ECF). I use this
convention throughout this order.
2

The seven lawsuits that have been filed in this district are designated as Civil Action Nos. 13-cv00087 through 13-cv-00093.

which have been refiled in the District of Colorado.
Defendant filed the instant motion (as well as the identical motion in the six other
cases pending in this district) under the impression that the Florida court’s order of
dismissal directed and required plaintiff to refile, if at all, in the Southern District of
Florida. Mere days after the filing of the motion, however, the Florida district judge
issued an order clarifying that
[i]t was not the Court’s intention to require that Plaintiff re-file
its severed claims in the Southern District of Florida. The
Court left to Plaintiff the discretion to re-file or not, and to do
so in this district or elsewhere. . . . Nothing in the Court’s
Order should be seen as denying Plaintiff the right to re-file
in another court of appropriate jurisdiction.
(Defendant’s Supplement to Motion To Enforce Compliance With Court Order and
To Transfer Venue App., Exh. A at 2-3 [#18-1], filed March 1, 2013.) Undaunted,
plaintiff insisted that the motion nevertheless should be granted on the ground that
plaintiff was engaged in impermissible forum shopping and that a transfer was
warranted pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a).
Defendant has filed motions, and supplements thereto, identical to those before
me here in each of the other six cases pending in this district. In the three such cases
assigned to her, my colleague, the Honorable Christine M. Arguello, has denied the
motions already, finding defendant’s arguments regarding forum shopping and the
propriety of a discretionary transfer pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) unpersuasive.
(See Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. v. Universal American Mortgage Co., Civil
Action No. 13-cv-00088-CMA-MEH, 2013 WL 2237493 (D. Colo. May 21, 2013); Order
Denying Defendant’s Motion To Transfer Venue, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
2

v. Universal American Mortgage Co., Civil Action No. 13-cv-00093-CMA-MJW [#26],
filed May 21, 2013; Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. v. Universal American
Mortgage Co., Civil Action No. 13-cv-00087-CMA-MJW, 2013 WL 1685842 (D. Colo.
April 17, 2013).)
I concur with Judge Arguello’s comprehensive and cogent analysis of the legal
issues presented by and inherent to those motions, which analysis is equally applicable
in the case before me. I see no benefit in presenting a festooned reiteration of the
arguments so persuasively already made. There is no evidence to substantiate
defendant’s allegations of forum shopping; nor has defendant met its heavy burden of
establishing that a transfer of venue pursuant to section 1404(a) is warranted. Thus,
and for the reasons more fully set forth in Judge Arguello’s orders referenced above, I
find and conclude that the motion should be denied.
THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that Defendant’s Motion To Enforce
Compliance With Court Order and To Transfer Venue [#15], filed February 22, 2013,
is DENIED.
Dated June 3, 2013, at Denver, Colorado.
BY THE COURT:

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