Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-18-15510/USCOURTS-ca9-18-15510-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 290
Nature of Suit: Other Real Property Actions
Cause of Action: 

---

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

LN MANAGEMENT, LLC SERIES 5664

DIVOT,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A.,

Defendant-Appellee,

FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE 

ASSOCIATION; FEDERAL HOUSING 

FINANCE AGENCY,

Counter-Claimants-Appellees.

No. 18-15402

D.C. No.

2:13-cv-01420-

RCJ-GWF

LN MANAGEMENT, LLC SERIES 5664

DIVOT,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE 

ASSOCIATION; FEDERAL HOUSING 

FINANCE AGENCY,

Counter-Claimants-Appellants.

No. 18-15510

D.C. No.

2:13-cv-01420-

RCJ-GWF

OPINION

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2 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Nevada

Robert Clive Jones, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted February 7, 2020*

Pasadena, California

Filed April 24, 2020

Before: Danny J. Boggs,** Sandra S. Ikuta,

and Kenneth K. Lee, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Boggs

SUMMARY***

Joinder / Diversity Jurisdiction

The panel vacated the district court’s judgment in a case 

raising claims after a Nevada homeowners’ association 

(“HOA”) commenced foreclosure proceedings; held that 

diversity jurisdiction existed and the Federal Foreclosure 

Bar applied; and remanded for further proceedings.

* The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision 

without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

** The Honorable Danny J. Boggs, United States Circuit Judge for 

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.

*** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 3

In March 2003, Kit Dansker obtained a home loan to 

purchase real property in Las Vegas, Nevada. On October 

3, 2009, Dansker died. In 2011, the neighborhood HOA 

began foreclosure proceedings, and sold the property to LN 

Management, LLC. The priority lienholder was Fannie 

Mae, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). 

The district court held that LN Management had not 

identified any legal representative of Dansker’s estate, and 

since no such person was identified and joined, complete 

diversity existed. The district court then turned to the merits, 

and granted Fannie Mae’s loan servicer, JPMorgan Chase 

Bank, N.A.’s motion to dismiss on the grounds of thenprevailing precedent, Bourne Valley Court Tr. V. Wells 

Fargo Bank, N.A., 832 F.3d 1154 (9th Cir. 2016). The 

Nevada Supreme Court subsequently declined to endorse the 

holding in Bourne Valley.

The panel held as an issue of first impression in this court 

that Dansker, as a dead person, was not a proper person to 

be sued. The panel held that the dead lack the capacities that 

litigants must have to allow for a true Article III case or 

controversy. The panel further held that when a dead person 

is named as a party, the dead person’s prior citizenship is 

irrelevant for diversity citizenship purposes when a 

controversy is between citizens of different states.

The panel held that diversity did in fact exist at the time 

of removal where the lawsuit was against JPMorgan Chase 

and Kit Dansker, and Dansker, being dead, had no legal 

existence, and, therefore, was not a citizen of any state. The 

panel further held that the district court did not abuse its 

discretion by denying LN Management’s motion to 

substitute, for Dansker, the “Estate of Kit Dansker” where 

there was no indication in the record that probate 

proceedings were ever initiated by the Nevada courts in 

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4 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

Dansker’s regard, nor who the correct legal representative of 

Dansker’s estate was or is. The panel concluded that 

diversity jurisdiction continued to exist.

Because the theory on which the district court found in 

favor of JPMorgan and FHFA and Fannie Mae on summary 

judgment was flawed, the panel vacated the district court’s 

decision, and remanded.

COUNSEL

Kerry P. Faughnan, North Las Vegas, Nevada, for PlaintiffAppellant/Cross-Appellee.

Howard N. Cayne, Asim Varma, Michael A.F. Johnson, 

Dirk C. Phillips, Lindsey D. Carson, and Omomah I. Abebe, 

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, Washington, D.C.; 

Abran Vigil, Bllard Spahr LLP, Las Vegas, Nevada; Leslie 

Bryan Hart and John Tennert, Fennemore Craig P.C., Reno, 

Nevada; for Defendants-Appellees/Cross-Appellants.

OPINION

BOGGS, Circuit Judge:

There are a number of ways to accomplish litigation 

regarding interests once held by a dead person. One can 

institute or join probate proceedings, for instance, or sue the 

executor of an estate in courts of general jurisdiction, or in 

some circumstances proceed directly against the successors 

of the deceased. Rarely do we see efforts to actually engage 

the dead in litigation. This case turns on such a question, 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 5

which is of first impression in this circuit: can you sue a dead 

person?1

The answer may seem obvious. Yet strangely, in the 129-

year history of this court, we have never been called upon to 

rule on this issue. We do so today, and we resolve the 

question in the negative.

I. Facts

This case is an appeal from yet another Homeowner’s 

Association (HOA) foreclosure in Nevada that is being 

challenged by the mortgagor, the Federal Housing Finance 

Agency (FHFA), and Fannie Mae. Nevada law allows a 

homeowners’ association to foreclose on a property that is 

more than a certain number of months in arrears, 

notwithstanding the interest of the holder of any lien that 

might otherwise have priority, such as a mortgage. See Nev. 

Rev. Stat. § 116.3116(2); Berezovsky v. Moniz, 869 F.3d 

923, 925 (9th Cir. 2017). Unsurprisingly, such procedures 

1 There is ample extrajudicial literature bearing on this question.

Dead men, we know from multiple authorities, would not make good 

litigants. They “tell no tales,” so they would be bad witnesses and 

deponents. See PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES 

(Walt Disney Pictures 2017). Since “you can’t take it with you,” they are 

judgment-proof defendants. See GEORGE S. KAUFMAN & MOSS HART,

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU 75 (Dramatists Play Svc., Inc. 1937). 

And there is persuasive authority that, in whichever of the two traditional 

locations the deceased is now to be found, obtaining personal jurisdiction 

and serving of process would be difficult. See U. S. ex rel. Mayo v. Satan 

& his Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282, 283 (W.D. Pa. 1971) (finding no personal 

jurisdiction over defendant notwithstanding the “unofficial account” of 

The Devil and Daniel Webster); State Senator Ernie Chambers v. God, 

No. 1075-462, (Neb. Douglas Cty. Dist. Ct. Oct. 8, 2008) (dismissing 

case due to impossibility of service on Defendant), appeal dismissed; 

order vacated (Neb. Ct. App., No. 08-1180, Feb. 25, 2009).

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6 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

have led to much litigation, particularly when the priority 

lienholder is Fannie Mae or the FHFA, which currently holds 

Fannie Mae in conservatorship. In such cases, the Housing 

and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) imposes a bar (the 

Federal Foreclosure Bar) to a foreclosure that would 

extinguish the interest of Fannie Mae or the FHFA without 

the FHFA’s consent. See 12 U.S.C. § 4617(j)(3); Fed. Home 

Loan Mortg. Corp. v. SFR Invs. Pool 1, LLC, 893 F.3d 1136, 

1140–41 (9th Cir. 2018); Berezovsky, 869 F.3d at 926–27.

The case before us had its origins in March 2003, when 

Kit Dansker obtained an $83,000 home loan from 

Washington Mutual Bank, F.A. to purchase a home at 

5664 Divot Place in Las Vegas, Nevada. In April of that 

year, Fannie Mae purchased the loan and took ownership of 

the note and Deed of Trust. Five years later, in July 2008, in 

response to the global financial crisis, Congress passed the 

Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), 

establishing the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). 

HERA contains a provision, the Federal Foreclosure bar, 

which mandates that “[n]o property of the agency shall be 

subject to . . . foreclosure . . . without the consent of the 

Agency.” 12 U.S.C. § 4617(j)(3). As authorized by HERA, 

the FHFA took Fannie Mae into conservatorship that 

September, where it remains to this day.

Meanwhile, on October 3, 2009, Dansker died. In 2011, 

the neighborhood HOA began foreclosure proceedings 

against 5664 Divot Place, and in March 2013 it sold the 

property at foreclosure sale to LN Management for $8,030. 

Neither the FHFA nor Fannie Mae ever consented to this 

HOA sale extinguishing the federal financial bodies’ interest 

in the property.

In May 2013, LN Management filed a quiet-title action 

in Nevada state court against Kit Dansker and JPMorgan 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 7

Chase Bank, N.A., which in May 2013 had become the 

record beneficiary of the deed of trust as Fannie Mae’s loan 

servicer. Because of the sheer number of Nevada HOA 

foreclosure cases over the past decade, as well as the 

interplay between state and federal courts, the law in this 

area has evolved repeatedly and rapidly. As a result, this 

case, like many others, had a convoluted path through the 

courts. First, JP Morgan Chase removed the case to federal 

court on the basis of diversity, arguing that Dansker was 

fraudulently joined. On September 5, 2013, LN

Management made a formal Suggestion of Death, through 

which it entered Dansker’s death certificate into the record, 

evidencing her death four years earlier. On October 30, LN 

Management moved to substitute “the Estate of Kit 

Dansker” as a defendant instead of Kit Dansker. LN 

Management stated that it “has also discovered that no one 

has effectuated any probate action, therefore this action 

should continue, but with the estate of Kit Dansker named as 

the property real party in interest.” As the close-eyed reader 

can see, the very fact that no probate action had been 

initiated (through the correct state procedures) created an 

anomaly when it came to the proposed joinder of the estate: 

how was it to be joined? Through whom? The motion did 

not say, exactly. The attached memorandum of law stated 

that, “Plaintiff has not found ... [a probate] proceeding, but 

has located at least one person, a Lori Weber, who claims to 

be the daughter of the decedent, which [sic] would be a 

proper person to serve on behalf of the estate of Kit Dansker, 

if the estate is substituted in as the real party in interest in 

place of Kit Dansker. FRCP 17(a)(1).”

In November, the United States District Court for the 

District of Nevada ruled that Dansker was fraudulently 

joined, denied LN Management’s motion to remand, and 

granted JPMorgan Chase’s motion to dismiss. The court, 

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8 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

while noting Dansker’s death, did not base its fraudulentjoinder ruling on these grounds; rather, it held that the 

joinder was fraudulent because the foreclosure had 

extinguished any possible right Dansker might have to the 

property. In a one-line comment, it also denied a motion to 

substitute the Estate of Kit Dansker, for the same reason. The 

district court then dismissed the action for failure to state a 

claim, holding under a then-current district court precedent 

that an HOA foreclosure under Nevada’s law did not 

extinguish the rights of the holder of a first mortgage. See 

Bayview Loan Servicing, LLC v. Alessi & Koenig, LLC, 

962 F. Supp. 2d 1222 (D. Nev. 2013). LN Management 

appealed.

While that appeal was pending, the Nevada Supreme 

Court ruled in SFR Investments Pool 1, LLC v. U.S. Bank, 

334 P.3d 408 (Nev. 2014), that a HOA foreclosure did 

indeed extinguish the rights of the holder of a preexisting 

mortgage. Id. at 419. LN Management and JPMorgan Chase 

therefore jointly requested that the appeal be dismissed, 

following which the district court, at the agreement of both 

parties, vacated the dismissal that it had been previously 

entered. Now the case was back before the district court. At 

this point, Fannie Mae and the FHFA moved successfully to 

intervene. The federal parties then moved for summary 

judgment on the basis of the Federal Foreclosure Bar. The 

district court denied this motion in September 2015, ruling 

that the fact that Fannie Mae did not appear as the record 

beneficiary of the deed of trust “create[d] a genuine issue of 

material fact as to whether the FHFA or Fannie Mae owned 

the note and deed of trust at the time of [the HOA] sale.”2

2 This common situation, in which a bank rather than Fannie Mae 

appeared as the record beneficiary on the original mortgage, created two 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 9

In April 2017, the district court granted “several months” 

for jurisdictional discovery because, as it later noted, 

“diversity depended on the citizenships of any successor(s)-

in-interest of the deceased homeowner (Kit Dansker) . . . .” 

Then, on December 7, 2017, LN Management renewed its 

motion to substitute the estate of Kit Dansker as the real 

party in interest in place of Kit Dansker. Despite the 

jurisdictional discovery period, the renewed motion was not 

materially different than the previous one, because it still did 

not identify a representative of the estate. It stated (in slightly 

more definitive language than the first time around) that 

“Plaintiff had located a daughter of the decedent, who lives 

in Nevada, which [sic] would be a proper person to serve on 

behalf of the estate of Kit Dansker, if the estate is substituted 

in . . . .” LN Management further requested time to “serve 

Lori Weber, a beneficiary of the estate of the deceased, Kit 

Dansker.”

distinct questions for courts in the Nevada HOA cases. The first was 

whether Fannie Mae and the FHFA retained a property right in the 

mortgages, so as to invoke the Federal Foreclosure Bar. Cf. Berezovsky, 

869 F.3d at 932. The second was whether the type of evidence typically 

presented—the records of the federal financial bodies and the 

declarations of their representatives—was admissible and sufficient to 

support summary judgment. Cf. id. at 932–33 & n.8.

At the time the district court in this case ruled, it relied on a 2012 

Nevada Supreme Court case, Edelstein v. Bank of N.Y. Mellon, 286 P.3d 

249, 254 (Nev. 2012), to hold that there was a triable issue of fact on the 

first inquiry and doubts as to the sufficiency of the evidence on the 

second. As will be seen, we have since clarified that the controlling 

Nevada precedent is In re Montierth, 354 P.3d 648, 650–51 (Nev. 2015), 

and that under it, the property right that Fannie Mae and the FHFA had 

in the mortgage here was sufficient to invoke the Federal Foreclosure 

Bar and the type of evidence involved was admissible and sufficient. See 

Berezovsky, 869 F.3d at 932–33 & n.8.

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10 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

In 2018, the district court entered a second summaryjudgment ruling, which is the one that is on appeal today. 

First, the court noted that, notwithstanding the jurisdictionaldiscovery process, “the parties had not identified any [of 

Dansker’s] successors.” “The dispositive fact was therefore 

that no non-diverse party had been joined.” In the absence of 

identifiable successors, the court noted, “LN now argues that 

the Court should consider Dansker’s estate to be a defendant 

(and to substitute the estate for Dansker, if necessary), and 

that under § 1332 the citizenship of the estate is the same as 

Dansker’s citizenship at the time of her death, i.e., Nevada, 

which would destroy diversity.” But LN had “neither 

identified any legal representative of Dansker’s estate nor, to 

the Court’s knowledge, made any effort to have one 

appointed” under state law in the five years (at the least) 

since learning of Dansker’s death. And “Dansker’s estate, 

like Dansker’s memory, is an abstract concept that cannot be 

sued except through a legal representative who can appear to 

defend the interests of the heirs (whether yet determined or 

not) in any remaining estate property.” Since such a person 

had not been identified and joined, the court found, complete 

diversity existed. Moreover, the court also ruled that:

The Court denies the separate motion to 

substitute “the Estate of Kit Dansker” for Kit 

Dansker. First, Kit Dansker is not even a 

proper party who can be substituted for. She 

died before the action was filed, and no legal 

representative has ever appeared. Second, her 

estate is not a juridical entity that can sue or 

be sued except through a representative, and 

LN identifies none.

Having so ruled, and having found that there was complete 

diversity, the district court then turned to the merits. It 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 11

granted JPMorgan Chase’s motion to dismiss on the grounds 

of our then-prevailing precedent, Bourne Valley Court Tr. v. 

Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 832 F.3d 1154 (9th Cir. 2016), 

which held that Nevada’s HOA foreclosure statute was 

unconstitutional for lack of due process. Id. at 1160. This 

appeal followed.

The FHFA and Fannie Mae, meanwhile, cross-appealed 

the district court’s denial of their motion for summary 

judgment on the basis of the Federal Foreclosure Bar and its 

denial as moot of their quiet-title and declaratory-judgment 

counterclaims. The cross-appeal is also before us in this 

case.

II. Standards of Review

We review a district court’s grant or denial of summary 

judgment de novo. Oswalt v. Resolute Indus., Inc., 642 F.3d 

856, 859 (9th Cir. 2011); Aceves v. Allstate Ins. Co., 68 F.3d 

1160, 1163 (9th Cir. 1995).

“Removal presents a question of subject matter 

jurisdiction, which is reviewed de novo.” Schnabel v. Lui, 

302 F.3d 1023, 1029 (9th Cir. 2002). We review the decision 

to allow substitution under Fed. R. Civ. P. 25 for an abuse of 

discretion. See In re Bernal, 207 F.3d 595, 598 (9th Cir. 

2000); Charles v. Burton, 169 F.3d 1322, 1327 n.6 (11th Cir. 

1999). Similarly, we review the denial of a Fed. R. Civ. P. 

15 motion to amend for abuse of discretion. Allen v. City of 

Beverly Hills, 911 F.2d 367, 373 (9th Cir. 1990).

III. Legal Analysis

Since the filing of this appeal, changes in or clarifications 

of the law have caused each party to abandon positions taken 

at the district court. The Nevada Supreme Court, in response 

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12 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

to a certified question from the federal District Court for the 

District of Nevada, clarified in 2018 that the HOA statute 

was subject to certain procedural protections of Nevada law 

(which the Bourne Valley court had held did not apply in 

such cases) and thus complied with constitutional dueprocess requirements. SFR Invs. Pool 1, LLC v. Bank of New 

York Mellon, 422 P.3d 1248, 1251–53 (Nev. 2018); see 

Bourne Valley, 832 F.3d at 1159. Therefore, the Nevada 

Supreme Court declined to endorse the holding of Bourne 

Valley. SFR Invs., 422 P.3d at 1253. JPMorgan and the 

federal financial bodies concede, for the purposes of this 

case only, that the theory on which the district court found 

in their favor at summary judgment was flawed. For that 

reason, though the defendants below ultimately do prevail 

today, we must vacate the decision below.

On appeal, the federal financial bodies and JPMorgan 

Chase rely, however, on another theory. They argue that the 

Federal Foreclosure Bar should apply to this case and that 

the district court erred in not granting summary judgment on 

this point. Here it is LN Management that gives way. Since 

the district court issued its 2015 ruling denying the federal 

defendants’ motion for summary judgment on the grounds 

of the Federal Foreclosure Bar, we have clarified that the 

Federal Foreclosure Bar does indeed apply in situations, 

such as the one in this case, where the federal entity is not 

the record beneficiary on the deed of trust but can prove its 

property interest through admissible evidence. See 

Berezovsky, 869 F.3d at 932; Fed. Home Loan Mortg. Corp. 

v. SFR, 893 F.3d at 1149–50.3 In its Third Brief on CrossAppeal, LN Management concedes that the FHFA’s 

“arguments [regarding the applicability of the] Federal 

Foreclosure Bar “are persuasive.” Failure to respond 

3 See also supra note 2.

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 13

meaningfully in an answering brief to an appellee’s 

argument waives any point to the contrary. See Clem v. 

Lomeli, 566 F.3d 1177, 1182 (9th Cir. 2009). We are, 

moreover, satisfied that, as we have ruled over and over 

again recently, the Federal Foreclosure Bar does indeed 

apply to such situations.4

Such a conclusion (or admission) is fatal to LN’s case on 

the merits. That would be that, therefore, except that LN 

Management raises two separate arguments as to why we 

lack subject-matter jurisdiction and thus that this case must 

be remanded to state court. First, LN Management argues 

that “original diversity jurisdiction never existed in the 

case,” because LN Management had originally tried to join 

Ms. Dansker (the deceased former resident of the foreclosed 

house) and the district court’s 2013 order finding this to be 

fraudulent joinder rested on an erroneous, since-discarded 

precedent. Secondly, LN Management points out that it had 

sought in 2013 and 2017 to have Ms. Dansker’s estate 

joined, which the district court denied each time. It now 

argues that these denials were error.

As to the first argument, we held in another HOAforeclosure case that attempts to join the former homeowner 

do not constitute fraudulent joinder. See Weeping Hollow 

Ave. Tr. v. Spencer, 831 F.3d 1110, 1113–14 (9th Cir. 2016). 

But Weeping Hollow concerned the joinder of a living 

owner. Dansker was dead at the time the joinder was 

4 In addition to Berezovsky and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. 

v. SFR, see, e.g., Williston Inv. Grp., LLC v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA, 

736 F. App’x 168, 169 (9th Cir. 2018); JP Morgan Chase Bank v. Las 

Vegas Dev. Grp., LLC, 740 F. App’x 153, 154 (9th Cir. 2018); Elmer v. 

JPMorgan Chase & Co., 707 F. App’x 426, 427–28 (9th Cir. 2017); 

Saticoy Bay, LLC, Series 2714 Snapdragon v. Flagstar Bank, FSB, 

699 F. App’x 658, 659 (9th Cir. 2017).

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14 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

attempted. Thus, we turn squarely to the question: can you 

sue a dead person?

A. Can “I Sue Dead People?”

Dansker, as a dead person, was not a proper person to be 

joined, regardless of Weeping Hollow. As it turns out, we 

have never had to explicitly rule before that a dead person, 

qua a dead person (as opposed to the dead person’s estate, of 

which, more later) cannot sue, be sued, or be joined to a 

lawsuit. We surmise that that is because such a rule is (and 

has been) self-evident. Nevertheless, it turns out at least 

three of our sister circuits and several district courts, in this 

circuit and elsewhere, have had to address this issue. Since a 

litigant’s citizenship for diversity purposes is a question of 

federal common law, rather than state law, see Kantor v. 

Wellesley Galleries, Ltd., 704 F.2d 1088, 1090 (9th Cir. 

1983), we look now to those cases to inform our judgment. 

These cases have tended to arise out of a few common 

factual scenarios: an attorney simply does not know an 

opposing party is dead when he files a lawsuit; or the 

attorney (racing against a deadline) makes a mistake when 

filing a claim on behalf of a recently-deceased client; or, in 

the mass-harm-litigation context, there are simply too many 

parties to have ascertained whether a particular one of them 

is living or dead. In all events, the consensus of our sister 

courts is unanimous: you cannot sue a dead person. Indeed, 

most of these cases take that point nearly for granted, 

focusing instead on the issue of whether and under what 

circumstances substitution ought to be allowed.

In 1969, the Fifth Circuit confronted a lawsuit filed by 

the Mizukamis, who were citizens of Japan, against Peter 

Buras, a Texan, who had hit and killed their relative Shasaku 

Mizukami with his pickup truck, and against Connecticut 

Fire Insurance Company, Buras’s insurer. Mizukami v. 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 15

Buras, 419 F.2d 1319, 1320 (5th Cir. 1969). Buras, however, 

had died between the time when he hit Shasaku and when 

the Mizukamis filed suit. Ibid. When the Mizukamis 

discovered this, they moved to substitute Buras’s heirs under 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 25(a)(1). In a short per 

curiam opinion, the Fifth Circuit concluded that “the rule 

contemplates substitution for someone who had been made 

a party before his death. It is not available to the appellants 

in the present case since Buras predeceased the filing of the 

action.” Ibid. The Fifth Circuit did not provide its reasons 

explicitly as to why the action could not be sustained as 

against Buras, but provided a citation to a district court 

decision, Chorney v. Callahan, 135 F. Supp. 35 (D. Mass. 

1955), that made it plain enough. See Mizukami, 419 F.2d 

at 1320. Chorney was another lawsuit arising out of a car 

crash in which the driver-defendant turned out to have died 

before suit was filed. 135 F. Supp. at 36. As in Mizukami, 

the plaintiff attempted to substitute the administrator of the 

decedent’s estate. Ibid. A suit against someone who is 

“already dead[,]” the Chorney court held, is “a nullity[.]”

Ibid. Therefore, no substitution was available because 

“[t]here was no action really existent in which he could be 

substituted.” Ibid. In any event, it was “obvious[]” that a 

“dead man . . . cannot be named party defendant in an 

action.” Ibid.

5

5 We took note of Mizukami in Gilmore v. Lockard, 936 F.3d 857, 

864 n.4 (9th Cir. 2019). That case involved a § 1983 suit brought by 

Gilmore against several prison guards, one of whom died after being 

sued but before service of process. Id. at 859, 862–63. In overturning the 

denial of Gilmore’s motion to substitute the prison guard’s “successor or 

representative,” Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(a), we noted in passing that Mizukami 

was “inapposite since that suit was filed after the defendant’s death, and 

Rule 25(a) presupposes that the deceased was already a party in the 

action prior to death.” Id at 864 n.4.

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16 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

In 2004 the Tenth Circuit confronted the question of the 

substitution of a dead plaintiff, rather than a dead defendant. 

Esposito v. United States, 368 F.3d 1271 (10th Cir. 2004), 

concerned a Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit filed on behalf 

of a prisoner, alleging that his death had been “the result of 

a negligent failure to provide him with adequate medical 

attention” while incarcerated. Id. at 1272. His attorney filed 

suit the day before a deadline, and, whether from the rush or 

due to admitted inexperience, named Esposito, rather than 

his surviving spouse, as the plaintiff. Id. at 1272–73. The 

district court held, and the government argued on appeal, 

that substitution could not be allowed because the action 

was, ab initio, a nullity and therefore the district court lacked 

subject-matter jurisdiction. Id. at 1272. The circuit court 

considered explicitly “whether substitution is in fact 

necessary or whether the action can be pursued in the name 

of Mr. Esposito[.]” Id. at 1273. It had no trouble deciding 

that Esposito could not pursue the action, because (in 

relevant part) as a dead person, he both lacked the capacity 

to sue and was no longer the real party in interest. Id. at 

1273–74. As with Mizukami, the crux of the action was on 

whether substitution could be allowed.6

6 The Fifth Circuit decision in Mizukami was at base an 

interpretation of Rule 25(a), which, as that court saw it, “contemplates 

substitution for someone who had been made a party before his death” 

and therefore “is not available” to substitute someone who died before 

they ever became a party. Mizukami, 419 F.2d at 1320; cf. Fed. R. Civ. 

P. 25(a) (referring to the death of “a party” whose “claim is not 

extinguished”). The Tenth Circuit in Esposito, on the other hand, was 

interpreting Fed. R. Civ. P. 17, which addresses the substitution for the 

previous (incorrect) plaintiff one who is the real party in interest. This 

rule contains affirmative language enjoining courts “not [to] dismiss an 

action for failure to prosecute in the name of the real party in interest 

until . . . a reasonable time has been allowed for the real party in interest 

to . . . be substituted into the action. After . . . substitution, the action 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 17

The most recent circuit decision to address the question 

of whether the dead can sue or be sued is House v. Mitra 

QSR KNE LLC, 796 F. App’x 783 (4th Cir. 2019). This 

unpublished but thorough Fourth Circuit opinion gives a 

persuasive overview of the law in this area. House was the 

manager of a restaurant who suffered from alcoholism. 

When his employer terminated him while House was in a 

treatment program, House filed a discrimination charge with 

the EEOC under the ADA. House unfortunately died, but his 

counsel, who faced a filing deadline on the same day that he 

was informed of his client’s passing, commenced the suit in 

House’s name. He then moved to substitute. The Fourth 

Circuit saw the core difficulty in trying to address a suit filed 

on behalf of a dead plaintiff as one of Article III standing:

Absent a plaintiff with legal existence, there 

can be no Article III case or controversy. 

“The most elemental requirement of 

adversary litigation is that there be two or 

more parties. There must be a real plaintiff at 

the inception of the suit. . . .” Wright & 

proceeds as if it had been originally commenced by the real party in 

interest.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(a)(3). The Tenth Circuit saw this distinction 

as rendering Mizukami “not on point.” 368 F.3d at 1277. Instead, it held 

that “Rule 17(a) is designed to prevent forfeitures, and as such must be 

given broad application.” Id. at 1278. Observing that “nothing in Rule 

17(a) requires that the original plaintiff have capacity to sue[,]” it ruled 

that substitution should be allowed and “shall have the same effect as if

the action had been commenced in the name of the real party in interest.” 

Id. at 1277–78 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(a) (emphasis added)). In a 

separate section, relying on the commentary to the Rule, the court 

stipulated that the original mistake also had to be “honest.” Id. at 1276–

77. While the Tenth and the Fifth Circuits are therefore not technically 

in a circuit split, the Tenth Circuit’s ruling is incompatible with the 

constitutional rule embraced by the Fourth Circuit in the next case we 

examine. That case, however, is unpublished.

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18 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

Miller, § 3530. Only an actual and live 

plaintiff can “assure that concrete 

adverseness which sharpens the presentation 

of issues upon which the court so largely 

depends for illumination of difficult . . . 

questions[.]” Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 

204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962); see 

also Ellis v. Dyson, 421 U.S. 426, 434, 95 

S.Ct. 1691, 44 L.Ed.2d 274 (1975) 

(expressing “grave reservations about the 

existence of an actual case or controversy” in 

challenge to loitering ordinance because 

putative plaintiffs had not been heard from in 

a year). By the same token, a plaintiff without 

legal existence is a poor fit for the Article III 

standing trifecta of injury, causation, and 

redressability; it is not clear, for example, 

how a favorable court ruling could offer 

redress to a deceased person, or a party 

otherwise lacking legal existence. See 

ChinaCast Educ. Corp. v. Chen Zhou Guo, 

No. CV 15-05475-AB, 2016 WL 10653269, 

at *2 (C.D. Cal. Jan. 8, 2016) (considering 

“the fundamental standing question of 

whether” alleged injuries can be redressed “if 

Plaintiff no longer legally exists”). But 

however we frame the jurisdictional defect 

here, the outcome is the same: “There is no 

plaintiff with standing if there is no plaintiff.”

In re: 2016 Primary Election, 836 F.3d 584, 

587–88 (6th Cir. 2016).

* * *

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 19

Absent legal existence at the outset of this 

litigation, House could not have “a personal 

stake in the outcome of the controversy” 

sufficient “to warrant his invocation of 

federal-court jurisdiction.” Warth v. Seldin, 

422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 

343 (1975). Because House personally stands 

to gain or lose nothing from the suit, no 

matter how it is resolved, he cannot avail 

himself of the jurisdiction of the federal 

courts.

Id. at 787–88. In short, “a deceased plaintiff lacks Article III 

standing.” Id. at 784.7 We find the Fourth Circuit’s 

observations persuasive. Plaintiffs, to be sure, have to 

undergo a standing analysis—injury, causation, and 

redressability—to which defendants are not subject. But we 

do not see that as the heart of the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning 

here, but rather as an illustration of it. The core observation 

is that the dead lack the capacities that litigants must have to 

allow for a true Article III case or controversy. We find this 

obvious, but sometimes stating the obvious is necessary.

7 Because it grounded its decision in constitutional standing, the 

House court distinguished Esposito, writing:

[T]he [Esposito] court failed to address the 

jurisdictional implications of a deceased plaintiff, 

holding only ‘that [the plaintiff’s] lack of capacity at 

the time the suit was filed d[id] not prevent the 

substitution from relating back to the date the suit was 

filed under Rule 17(a).’ [Esposito, 368 F.3d]. at 1278.

House, 796 F. App’x at 789.

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20 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

There is a further difference between House and our 

case. In House, because the sole plaintiff was dead, once he 

lacked standing, then, unless substitution was allowed, the 

entire case became a nullity. In our case, if LN Management 

could not proceed against Dansker, they nevertheless still 

had a live case or controversy against Fannie Mae, the 

FHFA, and JPMorgan Chase, which they could continue to 

pursue in federal court. Indeed, this is the core of the 

diversity question. Substitution then becomes a separate 

question, which is examined in section III.B below. 

Meanwhile, we continue our assessment of federal common 

law by turning to cases from the nation’s district courts.

The federal defendants in our case cite two district court 

cases from outside our circuit. One of those cases, Fulford v. 

Mkt. St. Mortg. Corp., No. 05-cv-336, 2005 WL 3263884 

(M.D. Ala. Dec. 1, 2005), is remarkably on point. As in the 

case before us, the plaintiffs sued both an out-of-state 

corporation and an in-state person, who turned out to have 

died before the lawsuit was instituted. Id. at *1. The result: 

complete diversity. “If a plaintiff joins with a nonresident 

defendant a dead man, who was a resident of the same state 

with the plaintiff in his lifetime, there is still complete 

diversity of citizenship, no matter how sincerely the plaintiff 

believed that the dead man was a living man.” Id. at *3 

(quoting State of Missouri v. A.B. Collins & Co., 34 F. Supp. 

550 (W.D. Mo. 1940)). The second case cited by the federal 

defendants is In re Engle Cases, No. 3:09-cv-10000-J-32, 

2013 WL 8115442 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 22, 2013), in which a 

district court was confronted with thousands of individual 

cases filed against a cigarette company by smokers. 521 of 

these would-be plaintiffs turned out to have been dead by the 

time the action was filed. Id. at *1. The court held that “a 

lawsuit filed in the name of a deceased individual is a nullity 

over which this Court has no jurisdiction” because “a 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 21

deceased individual cannot be a party to a lawsuit.” Id. at *2. 

The issue on which the parties truly jousted was, yet again, 

substitution.8

Several of our district courts have followed Mizukami or 

similar cases in holding that Rule 25 substitutions are 

unavailable when the defendant for whom substitution is 

sought was dead before the commencement of the action, 

which was therefore a nullity. See Gabor v. Deshler, No. 17-

CV-01524-LHK, 2017 WL 4151042, at *12 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 

19, 2017); Lacy v. Tyson, No. 1:07-cv-00381, 2012 WL 

4343837, at *2 (E.D. Cal. Sept. 20, 2012); Rhodes v. 

Gordon, No. CV 12-2863-JGB (DTB), 2013 WL 3780378, 

at *18 & n.14 (C.D. Cal. July 16, 2013), report and 

recommendation adopted, No. CV 12-2863-JGB (DTB), 

2013 WL 12072123, at *1 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 26, 2013). For a 

case in which the decedent was the plaintiff, and therefore 

the applicable Rule was Fed. R. Civ. P. 17(a), see Cacossa 

v. Amylin Pharm., Inc., No. 3:12-cv-03020-AJB (MDD), 

2014 WL 2090552, at *3 (S.D. Cal. May 16, 2014). The 

significant point for our purposes today is that none of these 

courts considered an answer to the dilemma of substitution 

to be allowing the case to proceed against (or on behalf of) 

the dead person. Looking outside our circuit, moreover, a 

significant number of other district courts have ruled that the 

8 On appeal, the issue of whether the lawsuits could have been 

maintained in the name of the dead was uncontested. In re Engle Cases, 

767 F.3d 1082, 1108 (11th Cir. 2014) (“It is uncontested that the personal 

injury cases were properly dismissed—whether nullities ab initio or 

not—if the complaints cannot now be amended to substitute in the 

personal representatives of the decedents' estates and allege wrongful 

death claims or survival claims on their behalf.” Nevertheless, the 

Eleventh Circuit felt comfortable proclaiming that, “As any lawyer 

worth his salt knows, a dead person cannot maintain a personal injury 

claim[.]” Id. at 1086–87.

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22 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

dead cannot sue or be sued. See House, 796 F. App’x at 788 

(collecting cases); Lacy, 2012 WL 4343837, at *2 (collecting 

cases in the Rule 25 context).

In addition, there are sound logical reasons not to allow 

suits against the dead. Our concern is not, primarily, injustice 

to the deceased.9 Rather, if lawsuits against the dead were 

9 There are historical examples where this was the concern—and 

which, if we take a very broad view of the term, may even constitute 

precedent (albeit from foreign jurisdictions) contrary to the decision we 

reach today. In January 897, Pope Stephen VII exhumed his predecessor 

and rival, Pope Formosus, and put Formosus on trial in the so-called 

“Cadaver Synod,” named for the physical presence of the deceased in the 

courtroom. See Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., The Cadaver Synod: Strangest 

Trial in History, POPULAR MEDIA Paper No. 42 (2001), available at

https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_pm/42. See also Robert 

Browning, The Ring and the Book, Bk. X ln. 30–31, reprinted in 4 THE 

COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING 463–68 (New Century 

Library 1899) (“Read,—how there was a ghastly Trial once/Of a dead 

man by a live man, and both, Popes”); id. at 1–161. We note however 

that this court may have jurisdiction that exceeds our own. See Matthew

16:18–19.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands in the 17th century, after Maurits, 

Prince of Orange, deposed the Oldenbarnevelt regime in a coup, 

Oldenbarnevelt’s secretary, Gilles van Ledenberg, committed suicide in 

prison in an attempt to save his estate from forfeiture. He was, 

notwithstanding, tried and found guilty (and “hanged” in his coffin). See 

2 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF 

BARNEVELD 394 (Harper & Bros. 1879), available at

https://tinyurl.com/u7wcxol. This may remind readers of the more 

familiar—to the English-speaking world—posthumous execution of 

Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell, however, was not tried, but rather 

posthumously attainted. See ANTONIA FRASER, CROMWELL 691–92

(Knopf 1973).

While such cases are fascinating historical oddities, they provide an 

extreme example of the obvious injustice—and grotesqueries—that 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 23

allowed, injustice to the living would result. In this case, if 

Dansker’s heirs did have a viable claim to the property 

(something very much in doubt), then a suit against the dead 

Dansker would allow the plaintiff to create the appearance

of a true quiet-title action while in fact avoiding notifying 

those who could actually defend their rights, i.e. the 

representative of the estate. As a formal matter, we 

acknowledge the force of the Fourth Circuit’s analysis that 

the dead do not provide the requisite adversarialness to make 

them parties to an Article III case or controversy. More 

generally, we are confident that allowing proceedings 

against the dead would, in this case and many others, deprive 

the living of due process. We therefore join our sister circuits 

in holding that a party cannot maintain a suit on behalf of, or 

against, or join, a dead person, or in any other way make a 

dead person (in that person’s own right, and not through a 

properly-represented estate or successor) party to a federal 

lawsuit. And by extension, when a dead person is named as 

a party, the dead person’s prior citizenship is irrelevant when 

determining whether the controversy “is between . . .

citizens of different States.” 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).

We note, however, that we do not today rule on the tricky 

substitution questions that divided the Fifth Circuit in 

Mizukami and the Fourth in House, on the one hand, from 

the Tenth in Esposito, on the other. Because one cannot 

maintain a suit against a dead person, it follows that LN 

Management’s argument that “when the matter was 

removed, there was no diversity of the parties and therefore 

no subject matter jurisdiction of the district court” is simply 

wrong. There was diversity when the case was originally 

removed, because the lawsuit—as LN Management 

would result from bringing the dead into court in their own capacity. (If 

capacity is even a word that can be used in such circumstances.)

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24 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

acknowledges—was against JPMorgan Chase and Kit 

Dansker, the latter of whom, being dead, had no legal 

existence and therefore was not a “citizen[]” of any state. 

28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). Whether or not substitution ought to be 

allowed, notwithstanding that the party had been dead ab 

initio, is—as we have seen—a trickier question. Luckily, it 

is not one we have to resolve today, nor do we. As we discuss 

in the next section, the denial of the motion to substitute is 

evaluated under an abuse-of-discretion standard that LN 

Management cannot, in our case, overcome. In any event, 

diversity jurisdiction did in fact exist at the time of removal.

B.

Thus, LN Management turns to its second argument: it 

had sought in 2013 and 2017 to have Ms. Dansker’s estate 

joined, which the district court denied each time. It now 

argues that these denials were error.

As noted, we review the decision to allow substitution 

under Rule 25 for an abuse of discretion. See In re Bernal, 

207 F.3d at 598; see also Charles, 169 F.3d at 1327 n.6. 

Similarly, we review the grant or denial of motions to amend 

under Fed. R. Civ. P. 15 for abuse of discretion. Allen, 

911 F.2d at 373. LN Management made its motion “upon . . .

FRCP 17(a)[,]” but as defendants rightly observe, Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 17(a) addresses the proper party to prosecute an 

action, not to defend it. The district court did not address this 

discrepancy when it ruled on the substitution motions. We 

could construe the request to replace Dansker with “the 

Estate of Kit Dansker” as a motion to substitute under Rule 

25(a) or, as LN Management now requests, as a request to 

amend the pleadings under Rule 15. Either way, the standard 

would remain the same (abuse of discretion)—as it would 

even if Rule 17(a) were the correct vehicle. See Jones v. Las 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 25

Vegas Metro. Police Dep’t, 873 F.3d 1123, 1128 (9th Cir. 

2017).

It is for this exact reason that we do not have to decide 

today whether to adopt the Mizukami rule (disallowing 

substitution for a dead person no matter how good the cause, 

because Rule 25 speaks only of substituting for claims that 

had previously existed and thus does not apply), or a more 

lenient and flexible rule based on something like the Tenth 

Circuit’s logic in Esposito. We leave that for a later court. 

Even if a district court could order substitution for a party 

dead ab initio, under Rule 25(a), LN Management cannot 

show that this district court abused its discretion in declining 

to do so.

LN Management requested the substitution, for Dansker, 

of “the Estate of Kit Dansker.” But “[a]n estate is not a 

person or a legal entity and cannot sue or be sued; an estate 

can only act by and through a personal representative and 

therefore any action must be brought by or against the 

executor or representative of the estate.” 34 C.J.S. Executors 

and Administrators § 847; see also Nev. Rev. Stat. § 143.060 

(“Actions for the recovery of any property . . . or to quiet title 

thereto, or to determine any adverse claim thereon . . . may 

be maintained by and against a personal representative in all 

cases in which the actions might have been maintained by or 

against the decedent.”); Jones, 873 F.3d at 1128 (“[N]o 

proper plaintiff had been named” under Nevada law where 

the complaint “nam[ed] Jones’s estate and father as plaintiffs 

(rather than naming the father as administrator of Jones’s 

estate).”). Therefore, the judge below was correct to refuse 

to allow the “estate,” as a mere concept, to be joined as a 

party. Indeed, because an estate is not a legal entity, the 

“Estate of Kit Dansker” only has meaning in Nevada insofar 

as certain machinery of the state courts is set in motion—a 

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26 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

will is probated, Letters Testamentary or of Administration 

are issued, an administrator is appointed, or the like. Cf., e.g., 

Nev. Rev. Stat. § 132.120 (“Estate” defined); §§ 136.070, 

139.120. As Judge Jones explained below, in order to open 

an estate, someone would have “to petition a Nevada probate 

court to appoint a personal representative under [Nev. Rev. 

Stat.] Chapter 138 (if there be a will), or an administrator or 

special administrator under Chapters 139 or 140 (if Dansker 

died intestate).” LN Management knew as early as 2013 that 

this had not been done, arguing in its filing that it “ha[d] also 

discovered that no one has effectuated any probate action 

. . . .” There is no indication in this record that probate 

proceedings were ever initiated by the Nevada courts in 

Dansker’s regard, nor (which would also matter) if they were 

ever closed. Nor who the correct legal representative of 

Dansker’s estate was or is. Therefore, the request to add an 

unknown, and perhaps nonexistent, executor (if the motion 

were to be so construed) is clearly improper.

On appeal, LN Management leans most heavily on the 

fact that in both 2013 and 2017 it identified one Lori Weber, 

“who claims to be the daughter of the decedent,” whom it 

wished to have served and who, it argues, would have been 

a proper person to serve so as to bring in the estate. LN 

Management now argues that in light of this, its motions 

should have been granted and thus that diversity jurisdiction 

should have been destroyed.

It is, remarkably, still unclear whether Dansker’s 

daughter is a proper representative of the estate for legal 

purposes—or even exists. Plaintiff proposed to join her “on 

behalf of the estate of Kit Dansker, if the estate is substituted 

in as the real party in interest in place of Kit Dansker.” 

(Emphasis added.) This seems to duck, rather than solve, the 

essential problem that one must sue the correct legal 

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LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK 27

representative of the estate, not the estate as a concept. Put 

simply, there still is no evidence in the record that Weber 

was the correct legal representative of Dansker’s estate, nor 

that LN Management had sought to sue her in her personal 

capacity as a potential heir to the property. The district court 

was correct to note that:

LN has neither identified any legal 

representative of Dansker’s estate nor, to the 

Court’s knowledge, made any effort to have 

one appointed. LN has had several years 

since learning (no later than 2013) of 

Dansker’s death (in 2009) to petition a 

Nevada probate court to appoint a personal 

representative under Chapter 138 (if there be 

a will), or an administrator or special 

administrator under Chapters 139 or 140 (if 

Dansker died intestate). Absent a successor 

with his or her own interest in the property—

none has been identified—only a legal 

representative of Dansker’s estate may sue or 

be sued. . . . And although the Court has 

jurisdiction to enter judgment on a civil 

common law claim against such a 

representative, the Court has no jurisdiction 

to appoint a representative in the first 

instance, which would be an act of 

administration of the estate. See Marshall v. 

Marshall, 547 U.S. 293, 311 (2006).

Moreover, LN Management’s sloppiness in making its 

renewed motion before the district court, despite having 

been granted several months for jurisdictional discovery in 

2017, raises the inference that it was not sufficiently diligent 

or serious about joining the estate to the quiet title action. 

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28 LN MGMT. V. JPMORGAN CHASE BANK

This suspicion persists on appeal, due to LN Management’s 

continued conflation of the concepts of the estate versus its 

representative versus descendants of the decedent, and due 

to LN Management’s generally cavalier language. (E.g., 

“The district court should have allowed substitution of the 

Estate, (or an individual representing the Estate if it or Chase 

was so concerned)[.]” (Emphasis added.)) In sum, we 

certainly cannot say that the trial judge abused his discretion 

by denying a motion to substitute, made in this form and with 

such deficiencies after so much litigation. Thus, diversity 

jurisdiction continues to exist.

IV. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district 

court is VACATED and, holding that jurisdiction exists and 

the Federal Foreclosure Bar applies, we REMAND the case

for proceedings in conformity with this opinion.10

10 Costs on appeal shall be taxed against LN Management.

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