Appellate Law

CA1: Face off on Facebook turns into first impression Civ. Pro. question about amended complaints

By S. COTUS

ConnectU LLC v. Zuckerberg, No. 07-1796.  To begin, let me tell you that I don?t like social networking sites.  They are stupid.  They are worse than the practice of giggling after every sentence that has taken hold at some law firms.  It is even worse than Selya?s cutesy writing.  I expected some stupid fight.  But, it actually has an issue worth discussing, which is a matter of first impression.

whether an amended complaint that switches the basis of the district court's subject matter jurisdiction from the existence of diversity of citizenship, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1), to the existence of a federal question, id. § 1331, should be given effect when filed as of right before any jurisdictional challenge has been mounted.

Applying Rockwell International Corp. v. United States, 127 S. Ct. 1397 (2007), The First holds that the ?jurisdictional claim in the amended complaint warrants full consideration and constitutes a viable hook on which federal jurisdiction can be hung... [because] The LLC amended its complaint before the defendants filed a responsive pleading and, thus, the amendment was effective as a matter of right pursuant to Rule 15(a). Consequently, under ordinary rules of pleading and practice, the amended complaint would have replaced the original complaint lock, stock, and barrel.?  However, the First seems to indicate that the result would be different in a diversity case, and besides, ?no court has ever read the time-of-filing rule to bar a plaintiff from switching jurisdictional horses before any jurisdictional issue has been raised, abandoning a claimed entitlement to diversity jurisdiction, and substituting a claimed entitlement to federal question jurisdiction.?

The First rejects the argument that the whole thing is moot because the plaintiffs have begun again at the District Court, because the running of the statute of limitations would ?defuse? a mootness claim. It also rejects the idea that the District Court was exercising a kind of hypothetical claim by even entertaining the motion to amend.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on April 03, 2008 (boomark / email).