Servco Insurance Services Washington LLC v. Soroko

• Court: District Court, W.D. Washington
• Decided: February 28, 2020
• Docket: 2:20-cv-00313
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

1 2 3 4 5 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON 6 AT SEATTLE 7 SERVCO INSURANCE SERVICES WASHINGTON LLC, 8 Plaintiff, Case No. C20-0313RSL 9 v. ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE 10 JAY SOROKA, et al., 11 Defendants. 12 13 14 This matter comes before the Court sua sponte. On February 26, 2020, defendants 15 removed this action to federal court alleging that the Court has jurisdiction based on the 16 diversity of citizenship of the parties. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a) (establishing that the 17 federal court’s basic diversity jurisdiction extends to “all civil actions where the matter in 18 controversy exceeds . . . $75,000 . . . and is between . . . citizens of different States.”). 19 “For a case to qualify for federal jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a), there must be 20 complete diversity of citizenship between the parties opposed in interest.” Kuntz v. Lamar 21 Corp., 385 F.3d 1177, 1181 (9th Cir. 2004) (internal citation omitted). In examining 22 whether complete diversity is present, the citizenship of a limited liability company is 23 determined by examining the citizenship of the owners/members. See Johnson v. 24 Columbia Props. Anchorage, LP, 437 F.3d 894, 899 (9th Cir. 2006) (holding that “like a 25 partnership, an LLC is a citizen of every state of which its owners/members are citizens”). 26 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE - 1 1 Defendants have not alleged the citizenship of each owner/member of Servco 2 Insurance Services Washington, LLC, instead noting that the LLC is organized under the 3 laws of Delaware, acknowledging that the identities of the members are unknown, but 4 nevertheless asserting that the members are not domiciled in Washington. These 5 assertions are insufficient to meet defendants’ burden of establishing the basis of the 6 Court’s jurisdiction. See Indus. Tectonics, Inc. v. Aero Alloy, 912 F.2d 1090, 1092 (9th 7 Cir. 1990) (“The party asserting jurisdiction has the burden of proving all jurisdictional 8 facts”); Fed R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3) (“If the Court determines at any time that it lacks subject- 9 matter jurisdiction, the court must dismiss the action”). Defendants state that they have no 10 idea who the members of the LLC are but that they believe they are not Washington 11 citizens: the citizenship allegation appears to be nothing more than speculation.1 As a 12 result, defendants are ORDERED TO SHOW CAUSE by March 13, 2020, why the Court 13 should not remand this action by providing the Court with the citizenship of all of the 14 owners/members of Servco Insurance Services Washington, LLC, at the time the 15 complaint was filed. The Clerk of the Court is directed to place this order to show cause 16 on the Court’s calendar for that date. 17 Dated this 28th day of February, 2020. 18 A 19 Robert S. Lasnik United States District Judge 20 21 22 23 1 Publicly-available information does not support defendants’ speculative assertion of 24 non-citizenship: a search of the Washington Secretary of State’s business records identifies plaintiff’s individual members as of August 2019, at least some of whom appear to be citizens of 25 Washington. 26 ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE - 2