Valdez v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.

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BENNY VALDEZ, Plaintiff, v. HOME DEPOT U.S.A., INC., Defendant.

No. 22-cv-01491-DMR

United States District Court, N.D. California

August 25, 2022

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO REMAND RE: DKT. NO 10

Donna M. Ryu United States Magistrate Judge

Plaintiff Benny Valdez filed this personal injury suit in San Mateo County Superior Court against Defendant Home Depot U.S.A. and anonymous Doe defendants. [Docket 1 Ex. A (“Compl.”).] Home Depot removed based on diversity jurisdiction. [Docket No. 1 (“Notice of Removal”).] Valdez now moves to remand the case to state court. [Docket Nos. 10 (“Mot.”), 12 (“Reply”).] Defendant opposes remand. [Docket No 11.] This matter is suitable for resolution without oral argument. Civ. L.R. 7-1(b). For the following reasons, the motion is denied.

I. BACKGROUND

The following facts are alleged in the complaint, which is attached to Defendant's Notice of Removal and to its counsel declaration in support of its opposition brief. See Compl. at 5, 7-8; Declaration of Ruta Paskevicius (“Paskevicius Decl.”) ¶ 2, Ex. 1. On October 12, 2019, Plaintiff was at a Home Depot store in San Carlos, California and asked an employee identified as Doe 1 for help in removing two large pieces of lumber from the elevated lumber racks. The pieces of lumber weighed at least 30 pounds and were approximately 16 feet in length. Because of difficulty in removing the lumber, the unnamed employee requested help from another employee. After no help arrived, the employee asked Valdez for assistance in removing the lumber pieces. When Valdez and the employee attempted to remove the first piece, a second piece of lumber fell from the rack and hit Valdez in the head and neck, causing him significant and permanent injuries.

On September 23, 2021, Valdez filed his complaint in state court alleging negligence and premises liability against Defendant and Does 1-25. Compl.; Declaration of Gregory C. Cattermole (“Cattermole Decl.”) ¶ 5 [Docket No. 10-1.] Defendant answered the complaint on January 4, 2022. Id. ¶ 6. The parties then propounded written discovery. Id. ¶ 7. On February 23, 2022, Defendant served responses that identified the unnamed employee involved in the incident as Jose Ramon Castillo but did not provide his address and telephone number as requested in Valdez's interrogatory. Id. ¶ 8; see Cattermole Decl. Ex. B at ECF 32-33. Defendant's response summarized the incident as follows: “Plaintiff caused a piece of lumber to fall on Home Depot associate Jose Ramon Castillo and on himself by pulling on a piece of stuck lumber on a shelf.” Cattermole Decl. Ex. B. at ECF 40. Valdez served his response to Defendant's interrogatories on February 23, 2022, in which he named the employee involved in the incident as “Ramon.” Declaration of Gregory Cattermole Supp. Reply (“Cattermole Decl. II”) Ex. B. at ECF 16-17 [Docket No. 12-1.]

On March 9, 2022, Defendant removed the case. Id. ¶ 10; Docket No. 1. Valdez amended his complaint in state court to substitute Castillo for Doe 1 on March 15, 2022. Cattermole Decl. ¶ 11, Ex. C. Defendant was not served with Valdez's state court amendment. Paskevicius Decl. ¶ 3.

II. LEGAL STANDARD

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a), a defendant may remove to federal court any matter that originally could have been filed in federal court. Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 392 (1987). Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction and possess subject matter jurisdiction in civil cases based only on federal question or diversity jurisdiction. Id.; see 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1332. Diversity jurisdiction exists over “all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs,” and there is complete diversity of citizenship between the parties. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).

“The[] statutory procedures for removal are to be strictly construed.” Syngenta Crop Prot., Inc. v. Henson, 537 U.S. 28, 32 (2002). However, there is a “strong presumption against removal jurisdiction.” Abrego Abrego v. The Dow Chemical Co., 443 F.3d 676, 885 (9th Cir. 2006). The removing defendant bears the burden of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence that removal was proper. Geographic Expeditions, Inc. v. Estate of Lhotka ex rel. Lhotka, 599 F.3d 1102, 1106-07 (9th Cir. 2010). “If at any time before final judgment it appears that the district court lacks subject matter jurisdiction, the case shall be remanded.” 28 U.S.C. § 1447(c). “[W]hether remand is proper must be ascertained on the basis of the pleadings at the time of removal.” Broadway Grill, Inc. v. Visa Inc., 856 F.3d 1274, 1277 (9th Cir. 2017). “Where doubt regarding the right to removal exists, a case should be remanded to state court.” Matheson v. Progressive Specialty Ins. Co., 319 F.3d 1089, 1090 (9th Cir. 2003).

III. DISCUSSION

The parties do not dispute that Valdez is a citizen of California and Defendant is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Atlanta, Georgia, meaning that complete diversity exists between the named parties. Mot. at 5; Opp'n at 5. Nor do the parties dispute the amount in controversy. Their disagreement lies with the citizenship of the Doe defendants, and specifically Doe 1, Castillo-the employee involved in the incident. Plaintiff argues that Castillo is a California resident, which therefore defeats complete diversity and warrants remand. Defendant counters that Castillo was not named as a defendant at the time of removal and thus cannot be considered for the purposes of establishing diversity jurisdiction.

28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(1) provides that “[i]n determining whether a civil action is removable on the basis of the jurisdiction under section 1332(a) of this title, the citizenship of defendants sued under fictitious names shall be disregarded.” Congress enacted that provision as part of the Judicial Improvements and Access to Justice Act of 1988 “to address the issue of Doe defendants for purposes of diversity and remand.” Johnson v. Starbucks Corp., 475 F.Supp.3d 1080, 1083 (C.D. Cal. 2020).

According to the House of Representatives report accompanying the bill, Congress intended the provision in part to respond to the “problem that arises in a number of states that permit suits against ‘Doe' defendants. The primary purpose of naming fictitious defendants is to suspend the running of the statute of limitations.” H.R. Rep. No. 100-889, at 71 (1988), as reprinted in 1988 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5982, 6032. “The general rule has been that a joinder of Doe defendants defeats diversity jurisdiction unless their citizenship can be established, or unless they are nominal parties whose citizenship can be disregarded even if known.” Id. “This rule in turn creates special difficulties in defining the time for removal.” Id. The report continues:

Experience in the district courts in California, where Doe defendants are routinely added to state court complaints, suggests that in many cases no effort will be made to substitute real defendants for the Doe defendants, or the newly identified defendants will not destroy diversity. If the plaintiff seeks to substitute a diversity-destroying defendant after removal, the court can act as appropriate under proposed § 1447(d) to deny joinder, or to permit joinder and remand to the State court.

Id.

Following the 1988 amendments to the removal statute, the Ninth Circuit explained that “Congress obviously reached the conclusion that doe defendants should not defeat diversity jurisdiction” in enacting the amendments. Bryant v. Ford Motor Co., 886 F.2d 1526, 1528 (9^th Cir. 1989). Later, in Soliman v. Philip Morris Inc., 311 F.3d 966, 971 (9th Cir. 2002), the Ninth Circuit said that “the citizenship of fictitious defendants is disregarded for removal purposes and becomes relevant only if and when the plaintiff seeks leave to substitute a named defendant.”

Federal courts in California subsequently have diverged on whether pleading non-diverse Doe defendants divests a court of removal jurisdiction where the plaintiff initially does not know the real identity of the defendant but has pled enough facts about them to eventually identify them. On one hand, many courts have ruled that the plain language of 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d) per se bars consideration of a Doe defendant's citizenship for removal purposes. See, e.g., Garcia v. Walmart, Inc., No. 22-cv-00371-SVW-MRW, 2022 WL 796197, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 16, 2022); Rojas by and through Rojas v. Sea World Parks & Entm't, Inc., 538 F.Supp.3d 1008, 1014, 1023 (S.D. Cal. 2021).^[1]

Other courts have recognized that a literal interpretation of the removal statute may not make sense where a Doe defendant is merely a placeholder for a known person who can be readily identified through discovery and the complaint's “description of Doe Defendants or their activities is specific enough as to suggest their identity, citizenship, or relationship to the action.” Robinson v. Lowe's Home Ctrs., LLC, No. 15-cv-1321-LJO-SMS, at *3 (E.D. Cal. Nov. 13, 2015) (quoting Gardiner Family, LLC v. Crimson Res. Mgmt. Corp., 147 F.Supp.3d 1029, 1036 (E.D. Cal. 2015)).^[2] This line of decisions favors remand where the plaintiff's descriptions of the Doe defendants “provide a reasonable indication of their identity, the relationship to the action, and their diversity-destroying citizenship.” Robinson, 2015 WL 13236883, at *3. However, “[i]f the charges against Doe Defendants are so general that no clues exist as to their identity, citizenship, or relation to the action, the Court may disregard these fictitious defendants for jurisdictional purposes.” Id. (quoting Gardiner Family, 147 F.Supp.3d at 1036). Courts applying this caselaw have remanded suits where the plaintiff provided a sufficiently specific description of the...