Euro Wall Systems, LLC v. Reflection Window Company, LLC, et.al.
Filing
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MEMORANDUM Opinion and Order. Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 6/27/2014. Mailed notice(tlp, )
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
EURO WALL SYSTEMS, LLC,
Plaintiff,
v.
REFLECTION WINDOW COMPANY, LLC
d/b/a REFLECTION WINDOW & WALL,
LLC, an Illinois Corporation,
Defendants.
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Case No. 14 C 4621
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
On June 24 this Court issued a brief memorandum order ("Order") that brought to the
attention of defense counsel -- the attorneys for what the case caption describes as "Reflection
Window Company, LLC d/b/a Reflection Window & Wall, LLC" 1 -- their noncompliance with
this District Court's LR 5.2(f), which requires the delivery of a paper copy of all pleadings for the
assigned judge's use within one business day after filing. That brief Order concluded by ordering
counsel to deliver the missing copies of all pleadings to this Court's chambers forthwith,
accompanied by a $100 check payable to the Clerk of the District Court, and counsel has just
complied with that directive.
That however has been a minor digression, totally overshadowed by the astonishing
fundamental flaws involved in the attempted transfer of the case via removal to this District
1
That puzzling use of "d/b/a" is traceable to the fact that the underlying lawsuit that is
the subject of the purported removal now at issue before this Court characterizes the second
name as an "assumed name," so that it is not at all clear that there is actually a formal entity
organized under that name. Both for that reason and as a matter of convenience, this opinion
will employ the shorthand name "Reflection," treated as a singular rather than a plural noun.
Court. And on that score the term "flaws" is properly plural, as may not be the case with the
subject referred to in n.1.
To begin with, just how defense counsel purports to move a Florida state court action
(here the underlying lawsuit is Case No. 14-001121-CA in the Circuit Court of the Twentieth
Judicial Circuit in and for Charlotte County, Florida) to this District Court for the Northern
District of Illinois is a total mystery. Under the removal statute, 28 U.S.C. 1446(a), the removal
must be "to the district court of the United States for the district and division within which such
action is pending." Although that has been held to be a procedural defect that does not deprive
the improper District Court of subject matter jurisdiction (see Peterson v. BMI Refractories, 124
F.3d 1386, 1388, 1394 (11th Cir. 1997) 2 and 16 Moore's Federal Practice ยง 107.13 (3d ed.
2014)), that distortion of the fundamental principles of removal is really inexcusable.
But even more significantly, the attempted removal presents a truly subject matter
jurisdictional (and hence fatal) defect. Just as in the underlying state court Complaint,
Reflection's only allegations as to the limited liability companies on both sides of the "v." sign
are the jurisdictional irrelevancies of their respective places of incorporation and principal places
of business. Those allegations ignore just a month short of 16 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 White Pearl Inversiones S.A. v. Cemusa, Inc.,
2
Peterson involved a case that had been removed to a district court in Alabama sitting in
a federal district different from the federal district that included the situs where the underlying
Alabama state court action had been filed. Although the Eleventh Circuit cited older caselaw
that considered such an erroneous removal as a procedural violation relating to venue rather than
jurisdiction, to treat that error as not affecting subject matter jurisdiction is obviously very
different from permitting the kind of quantum leap that defense counsel has attempted here.
Nonetheless this opinion treats this Court as having jurisdiction to address the issue of its federal
subject matter jurisdiction -- or, more accurately, the lack of it.
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647 F.3d 684, 686 (7th Cir. 2011) and by other cases cited there). And that teaching has of
course been echoed many times over by this Court and its colleagues.
This Court has a mandated obligation to "police subject matter jurisdiction sua sponte"
(Wernsing v. Thompson, 423 F.3d 732, 743 (7th Cir. 2005)). There is really no excuse for
counsel's lack of knowledge of such a firmly established principle after the repetition for more
than 1-1/2 decades by our Court of Appeals and others.
Even apart from the Peterson discussion and holding that treated the issue as involving
venue rather than subject matter jurisdiction, this Court surely has enough jurisdiction to hold
that federal subject matter jurisdiction is patently absent for the reasons stated earlier in this
opinion. In sum, this action is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
__________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: June 27, 2014
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