Innerworkings, Inc., v. P'esco, LLC et al

Filing 6

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 2/7/2012:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
INNERWORKINGS, INC.,
Plaintiff,
v.
P’ESCO, LLC, et al.,
Defendants.

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No.

12 C 841

MEMORANDUM ORDER
InnerWorkings, Inc. (“InnerWorkings”) has filed this action
against P’esco, LLC (“P’esco”) and Mark Pofsky and Robert Strem,
each individually and as a representative of P’esco, seeking to
invoke federal subject matter jurisdiction on diversity of
citizenship grounds.

This memorandum order is issued sua sponte

because InnerWorkings’ counsel has flunked the obligation to
establish such federal jurisdiction.
Complaint ¶2 properly identifies InnerWorkings’ dual
citizenship in accordance with 28 U.S.C. §1332(c)(1), while
Complaint ¶¶5 and 6 specify that each of the individual
defendants is a California citizen.

But this is all that

Complaint ¶4 says as to P’esco:
Defendant, P’ESCO is a foreign corporation that is
authorized to do business in Illinois, including Cook
County, Illinois.
As that language reflects, Complaint ¶4 speaks 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

present lack of knowledge of such a firmly established 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, not only InnerWorkings’ Complaint but also this
action are dismissed (cf. Held v. Held, 137 F.3d 998, 1000 (7th
Cir. 1998)), with InnerWorkings and its counsel jointly obligated
to pay a fine of $350 to the District Court Clerk if an
appropriate and timely Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) motion hereafter
provides the missing information that leads to a vacatur of this
judgment of dismissal.1

Because this dismissal is attributable

1

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.
2

to InnerWorkings’ 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:

February 7, 2012

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