{"id":1506,"date":"2024-06-10T14:41:18","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T18:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/?p=1506"},"modified":"2024-06-10T14:41:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T18:41:18","slug":"illinois-federal-court-rules-that-a-plaintiff-cannot-evade-the-jurisdiction-of-the-court-that-he-voluntarily-invoked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/2024\/06\/10\/illinois-federal-court-rules-that-a-plaintiff-cannot-evade-the-jurisdiction-of-the-court-that-he-voluntarily-invoked\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois Federal Court Rules That A Plaintiff Cannot Evade The Jurisdiction Of The Court That He Voluntarily Invoked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Jennifer A. Riley, and Ryan T. Garippo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Duane Morris Takeaways:\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>On June 3, 2024, in Loonsfoot, et al. v. Stake Center Locating, LLC, No. 23-CV-3171, 2024 WL 2815422 (S.D. Ill. June 3, 2024), Judge David Dugan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois denied<\/a>\u00a0a plaintiffs\u2019 motion to dismiss his own lawsuit \u2013 a wage & hour class action – for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.\u00a0 This decision highlights one of the rare circumstances where a company may want to oppose a plaintiff\u2019s proposed dismissal of his class action and force the plaintiff to address the merits of his arguments early in the litigation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Case Background<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plaintiff Michael Loonsfoot (\u201cPlaintiff\u201d), a former employee of Stake Center Locating, LLC (\u201cStake Center\u201d), brought claims for alleged wage & hour violations.\u00a0 Stake Center is a company that provides \u201cutility locating services across the country.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at *1.\u00a0 From December 2021 through June 2024, Plaintiff worked in a variety of different roles for Stake Center.\u00a0 Plaintiff, however, believed that his former employer allegedly deprived him of wages for \u201ccompensable \u2018off the clock\u2019 work\u201d and failed to include certain amounts when calculating his overtime wages.\u00a0 Id. <\/em><\/p>\n

Based on those allegations, Plaintiff filed a lawsuit against Stake Center in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois for alleged violations of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act.\u00a0 In order to pursue those claims in federal court, Plaintiff argued that \u201cjurisdiction is proper under [the Class Action Fairness Act (\u201cCAFA\u201d)] because the proposed class has more than 100 members, the minimal diversity requirement is met, and the amount in controversy exceeds $5 million dollars.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at *2.\u00a0 Stake Center appeared, filed its answer, and then moved for judgment on the pleadings.<\/p>\n

In response, Plaintiff filed a motion to dismiss his own complaint<\/em> on the basis that the court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to hear the dispute.\u00a0 Plaintiff argued that because Stake Center denied the Plaintiff\u2019s general allegation that \u201c[t]his Court has original subject matter over this action pursuant to the jurisdictional provisions of the Class Action Fairness Act\u201d as well as similar allegations, jurisdiction must not be proper.\u00a0 Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Court easily dispensed with what it called Plaintiff\u2019s \u201cunusual litigation tactic.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at *3.\u00a0 The Court noted that where \u201cthe party that invoked the court\u2019s jurisdiction in the first place\u201d subsequently files a motion to dismiss \u201csuch motions are [considered] \u2018unseemly.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>(citing Napoleon Hardwoods, Inc. v. Professionally Designed Benefits, Inc<\/em>., 984 F. 2d 821, 822 (7th Cir. 1993)).\u00a0 The Court explained that \u201c[g]iven the procedural posture of the case, Plaintiff cannot unilaterally dismiss the action\u201d and thus, decided to address the jurisdictional issue under the CAFA.\u00a0 Id.<\/em> at *1, n. 2.<\/p>\n

The Court analyzed the elements of original jurisdiction under the CAFA.\u00a0 It held that \u201cthere is no dispute that the parties are minimally diverse\u201d; \u201cthat the proposed class exceeds 100 class members\u201d; and that \u201cthe amount in controversy exceeds $5 million\u201d as pled.\u00a0 Id.<\/em> at *4.\u00a0 The Court further noted that \u201cPlaintiff provides no legal authority for the contention that a Defendant\u2019s denial of an allegation in an answer is controlling on any issues, including the existence of subject matter jurisdiction.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at *2, n. 5.\u00a0 The Court, therefore, denied Plaintiffs\u2019 motion to dismiss his own complaint \u2014 against the backdrop of Stake Center\u2019s argument that Plaintiff was \u201conly seeking dismissal to avoid a ruling on the pending Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings.\u201d\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at *1.<\/p>\n

Implications For Companies<\/strong><\/p>\n

It should go without saying that it is atypical for a company to \u201cdecline[ ] Plaintiff\u2019s request to consent to dismissal of\u201d a class action lawsuit.\u00a0 Id. <\/em>at *1, n. 2.\u00a0 That said, the defendant here astutely recognized that Plaintiff\u2019s dismissal request was simply a procedural dance to avoid addressing the merits of the employer\u2019s dispositive motion.\u00a0 The defendant recognized that the Plaintiff\u2019s lawsuit would just be refiled in state court \u2014 which likely would be a less favorable forum to the corporate defendant.<\/p>\n

For that reason, if corporate counsel has a winning argument that it can raise in a Rule 12 motion, it often makes sense to put plaintiffs to their proofs in federal court, and not indulge in procedural gymnastics that will only lead to a case being heard in a less favorable forum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Jennifer A. Riley, and Ryan T. Garippo Duane Morris Takeaways:\u00a0 On June 3, 2024, in Loonsfoot, et al. v. Stake Center Locating, LLC, No. 23-CV-3171, 2024 WL 2815422 (S.D. Ill. June 3, 2024), Judge David Dugan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois denied\u00a0a plaintiffs\u2019 motion … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Illinois Federal Court Rules That A Plaintiff Cannot Evade The Jurisdiction Of The Court That He Voluntarily Invoked”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":583,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[30],"class_list":["post-1506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wage-hour-litigation"],"authors":[{"term_id":30,"user_id":583,"is_guest":0,"slug":"classactiondefense","display_name":"Class Action Defense","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2020\/10\/dmlogo.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/583"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1506"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/classactiondefense\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}