Family Entertainment Group, LLC v. Bellaire Hospitalities, LLC
Filing
6
MEMORANDUM Opinion and Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 12/6/2011:Mailed notice(srn, )
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, LLC,)
)
Plaintiff,
)
)
v.
)
)
BELLAIRE HOSPITALITIES, LLC,
)
)
Defendant.
)
No.
11 C 8559
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
Family Entertainment Group, LLC (“Family Entertainment) has
filed a Complaint against Bellaire Hospitalities, LLC
(“Bellaire”), seeking to invoke federal subject matter
jurisdiction on diversity of citizenship grounds.
Because that
effort is impermissibly flawed in that Family Entertainment has
failed to carry its burden of establishing such jurisdiction,
this sua sponte opinion dismisses both the Complaint and this
action on jurisdictional grounds--but with the understanding that
if the present flaw can be cured promptly, the action may then be
reinstated.
Here are the Complaint’s only allegations that bear on the
parties’ citizenship:
4. Plaintiff, Family Entertainment Group, LLC
(“FEG”), is an Illinois limited liablity company, with
its principal place of business in Barrington,
Illinois.
5. Defendant, Bellaire Hospitalities, LLC
(“Bellaire”), is a Texas limited liability company,
with its principal place of business in Houston, Texas.
6. The managing member of Bellaire is located in
Houston, Texas. Pursuant to an investigation with the
Texas Secretary of State’s Office, Bellaire does not
have any other members.
As that language reflects, Complaint ¶¶4 and 5 speak only of
facts that are jurisdictionally irrelevant when a limited
liability company is involved.
Those allegations ignore more
than a dozen years of repeated teaching from our Court of Appeals
(see, e.g., Cosgrove v. Bartolotta, 150 F.3d 729, 731 (7th Cir.
1998) and a whole battery of cases since then, exemplified by
Thomas v. Guardsmark, LLC, 487 F.3d 531, 533-34 (7th Cir. 2007)).
And that teaching has of course been echoed many times over by
this Court and its colleagues.
For a good many years this Court was content simply to
identify such failures to the lawyers representing plaintiffs in
pursuance of its mandated obligation to “police subject matter
jurisdiction sua sponte” (Wernsing v. Thompson, 423 F.3d 732, 743
(7th Cir. 2005)).
But there is really no excuse for counsel’s
apparent lack of knowledge1 of such a firmly established
1
This opinion refers to “counsel’s apparent lack of
knowledge” because Complaint ¶6 might perhaps reflect some
awareness that the relevant facts are the members’ states of
citizenship. But that possibility is rendered doubtful by the
total omission from Complaint ¶4 of any information about the
members of Family Entertainment (counsel’s own client) and by
Complaint ¶6’s omission of both the identity and the citizenship
of Bellaire’s members (as contrasted with saying “located in
Houston, Texas”). If Family Entertainment’s counsel does try
again, full citizenship information as to all the members of both
parties must be provided.
2
principle, after well over a full decade’s repetition by our
Court of Appeals and others.
Hence it seems entirely appropriate
to impose a reasonable cost for such a failing.
Accordingly, as stated earlier, not only Family
Entertainment’s Complaint but also this action are dismissed (cf.
Held v. Held, 137 F.3d 998, 1000 (7th Cir. 1998)), with Family
Entertainment and its counsel jointly obligated to pay a fine of
$350 to the District Court Clerk if an appropriate Fed. R. Civ.
P. 59(e) motion hereafter provides the missing information that
leads to a vacatur of this judgment of dismissal.2
Because this
dismissal is attributable to Family Entertainment’s lack of
establishment of federal subject matter jurisdiction, by
definition it is a dismissal without prejudice.
________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:
December 6, 2011
2
That fine is equivalent to the cost of a second filing
fee, because a new action would have to be brought if the defect
identified here turns out to be curable.
3
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