Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Federal Court Rejects Another Motion to Remand Filed By A Plaintiff as Gamesmanship


In the case of Street v. GAC Shipping USA, Inc., No. 24-1739 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 1, 2024 Rufe, J.), the court denied a Plaintiff’s Motion to Remand a Case to State Court.

This case arose out of a slip and fall event.   

In this decision, the court ruled that a Plaintiff will not be allowed, after a year of litigation and after the filing of a number of previous motions to remand that were denied, to amend the Plaintiff’s Complaint to join non-diverse Defendants in an effort to support another request for a remand of the case to state court.

The court noted that the non-diverse Defendants at issue in this case were not indispensable parties but only amounted to allegedly subsequently negligent healthcare providers.

The court found that the Plaintiff’s attempt at this amendment was transparently forum-shopping gamesmanship relative to an effort to get the case remanded to state court.   As such, the court struck the non-diverse Defendant from the matter and denied Plaintiff’s latest Motion to Remand the case to state court.

Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.


I send thanks to Attorney James M. Beck of the Philadelphia office of Reed Smith law firm for bringing this case to my attention.

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