It’s an old and by now tedious and depressing story: plaintiffs file an aggregated action in the notorious courts of Madison or St Clair Counties in Illinois, the corporate defendant removes the case to the federal court in the Southern District of Illinois, and the federal judge lunges for any available basis to remand the case to the friendly (for plaintiffs) neighborhood judicial Hellhole. Call it docket management or call it judicial creativity. (more…)

We’ve done so many posts on removal – for you non-lawyers that means moving cases that were originally filed in state court into federal court – that even we have a hard time keeping track. Most of our posts have reviewed individual cases that, one way or another, we’ve learned about. There are 29 posts (not counting this one) that fall under the label “removal” on our topic list.

So we thought we’d (more…)

We’ve published a couple of posts recently (here and here) about removal in the tough context — where the medical malpractice and product liability claims arise out of the same medical treatment. In that situation, the removing product manufacturer must convince the federal court to sever (and remand) the malpractice claims, and to retain jurisdiction over the product liability claims, even though evidence introduced at the malpractice and products (more…)

We’re fixated on the subject: When a plaintiff files a complaint in state court that names both residents and non-residents of the forum state as defendants, can the non-resident defendant remove before the plaintiff serves the in-state defendant?
(We know that’s cryptic shorthand, but regular readers of this blog have seen more expansive descriptions of the issue in many previous posts, including
,
, and
, among others. We even
on the subject.)
(more…)