Atlantic-Woburn/Delaware I LLC v. Door to Door Storage, Inc.

Filing 13

District Judge Leo T. Sorokin: ORDER entered denying 10 Motion to Remand to State Court and allowing 11 Motion to Amend. See attached Order. (Matteson, Nicholas)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

ATLANTIC-WOBURN/DELAWARE
I LLC,
Plaintiff,
v.
DOOR TO DOOR STORAGE, INC.,
Defendant.

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Civil No. 14-13211-LTS

ORDER ON PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO REMAND
August 26, 2014
SOROKIN, D.J.
Plaintiff Atlantic-Woburn/Delaware I LLC brought this action for breach of contract and
breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing in Massachusetts state court. Defendant
Door to Door Storage, Inc. removed the case to this Court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction.
The plaintiff has moved to remand this action to state court and to amend its Complaint to clarify
its damages. For the reasons set forth below, the Motion to Remand, Doc. No. 10, is DENIED
and the Motion to Amend, Doc. No. 11, is ALLOWED.
DISCUSSION
The Complaint, filed in state court, sought recovery of more than $112,000 in allegedly
unpaid rent. Doc. No. 1 at 5. Now the plaintiff seeks to amend its Complaint by alleging more
than $38,000 in mitigation of the originally stated amount in damages, reducing its damages to
slightly more than $74,000. Doc. No. 11. The plaintiff argues that removal was improper

because the amount in controversy at the time of removal did not exceed $75,000, as damages
were mitigated after the Complaint was filed in state court but before removal to this Court. 1
The argument that the Court should look to the plaintiff’s proposed amended complaint is
squarely foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red
Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283 (1938), regardless of whether the proposed amended complaint would
better accord with the facts. In that case, the Court stated:
If the plaintiff could, no matter how bona fide his original claim in the state court, reduce
the amount of his demand to defeat federal jurisdiction[,] the defendant’s supposed
statutory right of removal would be subject to the plaintiff’s caprice. The claim, whether
well or ill founded in fact, fixes the right of the defendant to remove, and the plaintiff
ought not to be able to defeat that right and bring the cause back to the state court at his
election.
Id. at 294. The reasoning in St. Paul has not lost any vitality for its age. See Coventry Sewage
Assocs. v. Dworkin Realty Co., 71 F.3d 1, 5 n.4 (1st Cir. 1995) (citing the above-quoted excerpt
in a jurisdictional dispute).
Here, the plaintiff’s Complaint in state court claimed damages in excess of $75,000. If
the plaintiff wished to avoid litigating this action in federal court, the time to amend its pleadings
to comport with the facts was prior to the filing of the notice of removal. See St. Paul, 303 U.S.
at 294 n.25. Once removed, the plaintiff cannot stipulate or amend its way back to state court,
even though the amendment may concern events occurring before removal. See id. at 291-92;
Coventry Sewage, 71 F.3d at 5 n.4.

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The plaintiff concedes that the diversity of citizenship requirement is satisfied.
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Accordingly, the plaintiff’s Motion to Remand, Doc. No. 10, is DENIED. The plaintiff’s
Motion to Amend, Doc. No. 11, is ALLOWED as a matter of course, coming, as it does, within
twenty-one days after the filing of a responsive pleading. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 15(a)(1)(B).

SO ORDERED.
/s/ Leo T. Sorokin
Leo T. Sorokin
United States District Judge

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