Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caed-1_16-cv-00969/USCOURTS-caed-1_16-cv-00969-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Family Dollar, Inc.
Defendant
Rita Godoy
Plaintiff

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

RITA GODOY,

Plaintiff,

v.

FAMILY DOLLAR, INC.,

Defendant.

No. 1:16-cv-00969-DAD-JLT

ORDER DENYING MOTION TO REMAND

(Doc. No. 7)

This action was removed by defendant Family Dollar, Inc. from Kern County Superior 

Court (Case No. BCV-16-100386) on July 5, 2016. (Doc. No. 1.) Plaintiff filed a motion to 

remand on July 20, 2016, alleging the removal was untimely. (Doc. No. 7.) Defendant opposed 

this motion on August 23, 2016. (Doc. No. 10.) Plaintiff replied on August 29, 2016 (Doc. No. 

11), and a hearing was held on September 6, 2016, at which attorney David Shay appeared 

telephonically on behalf of plaintiff and attorney Roger Backlar appeared telephonically on behalf 

of defendant. The court has considered the submissions and arguments of counsel, and for the 

reasons discussed below, will deny the motion to remand.

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff’s first amended complaint (“FAC”), filed March 4, 2016 in Kern County 

Superior Court, indicates this is a “trip-and-fall” action based on state law negligence claims, 

stemming from plaintiff’s alleged fall over debris left on the floor of one of defendant’s stores in 

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Bakersfield, California. (Doc. No. 1 at 19, 24.) Defendant filed an answer to the FAC on May 2, 

2016 in state court. (Doc. No. 1 at 27.) The FAC indicates the amount in controversy was at 

least $25,000, but was otherwise and asserted only as “according to proof.”1 (Doc. No. 1 at 20, 

22.) On June 14, 2016, plaintiff served a statement of damages on defendant indicating that more 

than $2 million in damages were being sought. (Doc. No. 1 at 37.) According to defendant, this 

was the first “other paper” filed in the suit demonstrating what the amount in controversy was in 

this action and thus providing a basis for removal of the matter on the basis of diversity 

jurisdiction to federal court. Plaintiff, for her part, claims defendant should have been aware of 

the amount in controversy based on a pre-suit demand letter sent to defendant in which $100,000 

was demanded by plaintiff to settle the matter, thereby making the removal untimely and 

necessitating remand.

LEGAL STANDARD

A defendant in state court may remove a civil action to federal court so long as that case 

could originally have been filed in federal court. 28 U.S.C. § 1441(a); City of Chicago v. Int’l 

Coll. of Surgeons, 522 U.S. 156, 163 (1997); Yocupico v. PAE Group, LLC, 795 F.3d 1057, 1059 

(9th Cir. 2015). Thus, removal of a state action may be based on either diversity jurisdiction or 

federal question jurisdiction. City of Chicago, 522 U.S. at 163; Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 

U.S. 386, 392 (1987); Jordan v. Nationstar Mortgage, LLC, 781 F.3d 1178, 1181 (9th Cir. 2015). 

Removal jurisdiction is based entirely on federal statutory authority. See 28 U.S.C. § 1441 et seq. 

These removal statutes are strictly construed, and removal jurisdiction is to be rejected in favor of 

remand to the state court if there are doubts as to the right of removal. Geographic Expeditions, 

Inc. v. Estate of Lhotka, 599 F.3d 1102, 1107 (9th Cir. 2010); Provincial Gov’t of Marinduque v. 

Placer Dome, Inc., 582 F.3d 1083, 1087 (9th Cir. 2009); Gaus v. Miles, Inc., 980 F.2d 564, 566 

(9th Cir. 1992). The defendant seeking removal of an action from state court bears the burden of 

establishing grounds for federal jurisdiction. Geographic Expeditions, 599 F.3d at 1106–07; 

Hunter v. Philip Morris USA, 582 F.3d 1039, 1042 (9th Cir. 2009); Gaus, 980 F.2d at 566–67.

 

1 California law prohibits personal injury plaintiffs from stating a specific amount of damages 

sought in the complaint. See Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.10(b).

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The time for removal to federal court is set by statute. See 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b). 

Generally, there are two separate thirty-day provisions that govern timeliness under the statute. 

First, a notice of removal must be filed within thirty days of defendant receiving “a copy of the 

initial pleading setting forth the claim for relief upon which such action or proceeding is based.” 

28 U.S.C. § 1446(b)(1). However, if the pleading does not indicate the case is removable, a 

defendant may remove within thirty days of receiving “a copy of an amended pleading, motion, 

order or other paper from which it may first be ascertained that the case is one which is or has 

become removable.” 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b)(3) (emphasis added). Because the removal statute is 

strictly construed against removal jurisdiction, a defendant seeking to remove an action on 

diversity grounds in which the amount in controversy is unclear must “actually prov[e] the facts 

to support jurisdiction, including the jurisdictional amount.” Gaus, 980 F.2d at 566–67. 

ANALYSIS

Here, the parties dispute whether defendant’s removal of this action was timely. Plaintiff 

asserts defendant knew the amount in controversy was more than the jurisdictional limit, based on 

a pre-suit demand letter sent to them, and therefore was required to remove this action to federal 

court within thirty days of the filing of the suit. Defendant asserts the complaint was not 

removable because, on its face, no amount in controversy was indicated and the time limit 

contemplated by 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b) is not triggered by pre-filing demand letters. 

The court concludes there is binding circuit precedent on this specific issue. In Carvalho 

v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, 629 F.3d 876 (9th Cir. 2010), the plaintiff moved to 

remand a diversity case, alleging the defendant’s removal was untimely because the defendant 

“should have been aware that the case was removable based on the $25,000 settlement demand” 

the plaintiff had made prior to filing the suit. 629 F.3d at 885. Interpreting 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b), 

the same statutory provision at issue here, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals noted:

It is axiomatic that a case cannot be removed before its inception. 

If the second paragraph of section 1446(b) were meant to include as 

“other paper” a document received by the defendant months before 

receipt of the initial pleading, the requirement that the notice of 

removal “be filed within thirty days after receipt by the defendant” 

of the “other paper” would be nonsensical. Moreover, that the 

second paragraph lists “an amended pleading, motion, order”—all 

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documents which logically cannot predate the initial pleading—

before “or other paper” leads us to conclude that “other paper” does 

not include any document received prior to receipt of the initial 

pleading. See United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 294, 128 

S.Ct. 1830, 170 L.Ed.2d 650 (2008) (noting that “the commonsense 

canon of noscitur a sociis . . . counsels that a word is given more 

precise content by the neighboring words with which it is 

associated”). Accordingly, we conclude that any document 

received prior to receipt of the initial pleading cannot trigger the 

second thirty-day removal period.

Id. at 885–86.

To the extent plaintiff argues defendant’s subjective awareness of the potential amount in 

controversy made the FAC—which did not specify the damages sought—removable upon filing, 

that argument is also foreclosed by the decision in Carvalho. As the Ninth Circuit said in that 

case:

We also reject Carvalho’s suggestion that a pre-complaint 

document containing a jurisdictional clue can operate in tandem 

with an indeterminate initial pleading to trigger some kind of hybrid 

of the first and second removal periods. In Harris [v. Bankers Life 

and Casualty Co., 425 F.3d 689 (9th Cir. 2005)], we held that the 

first thirty-day removal period comes into play only if removability 

is ascertainable from “examination of the four corners of the 

applicable pleadings, not through subjective knowledge or a duty to 

make further inquiry.” 425 F.3d at 694. We adopted this “brightline approach” to “avoid[ ] the spectre of inevitable collateral 

litigation over . . . whether defendant had subjective knowledge, or 

whether defendant conducted sufficient inquiry.” Id. at 697. We 

would eviscerate our holding in Harris if we required defendants to 

rely on pre-complaint documents to ascertain whether a case stated 

by an indeterminate initial pleading is actually removable.

Id. at 886.2

/////

 

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The court finds plaintiff’s attempts to distinguish Carvalho both in her briefing and at oral 

argument on the basis of the “jurisdictional clue” language to be unpersuasive. It is true the 

defendants in Carvalho would have been required to multiply the amount potentially payable for 

each individual claim by the number of potential class members in order to realize the 

jurisdictional amount required under the Class Action Fairness Act was exceeded. Carvalho, 629 

F.3d 885. Nothing in that opinion, however, suggests the Ninth Circuit adopted this bright-line 

rule so defendants would not have to do math. Rather, as the language quoted above indicates, 

the court adopted a bright-line rule to avoid inquiries about whether the defendant had actual or 

constructive knowledge of the amount in controversy, the very question plaintiff wishes the court 

to ask here. 

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Plaintiff cites no Ninth Circuit or Supreme Court authority which calls the rules set out in 

Carvalho into question. Instead, plaintiff presents a number of non-binding decisions, including 

Krueger v. Kissinger, 37 F. Supp. 3d 1200 (D. Colo. 2014), Lulianelli v. Lionel, LLC, 183 F. 

Supp. 2d 962 (E.D. Mich. 2002), Bragg v. Kentucky RSA # 9-10, Inc., 126 F. Supp. 2d 448 (E.D. 

Ky. 2001), Huntsman Chemical Corp. v. Whitehorse Technologies, Inc., Case No. 97 C 3842, 

1997 WL 548043 (N.D. Ill. 1997), and Mielke v. Allstate Insurance Co., 472 F. Supp. 851 (E.D. 

Mich. 1979), presumably in an attempt to convince this court to rule in a manner inconsistent 

with binding circuit precedent. This is an invitation the court must decline. See, e.g., Hart v. 

Massanari, 266 F.3d 1155, 1175 (9th Cir. 2001) (“A district court bound by circuit authority, . . .

has no choice but to follow it, even if convinced that such authority was wrongly decided.”). 

Plaintiff’s arguments are therefore unpersuasive. Plaintiff has cited no subsequent binding 

authority overturning Carvalho, and this court has not found any in its own research. In fact, the 

court’s research reveals that the decision in Carvalho has been reaffirmed by the Ninth Circuit. 

See Kuxhausen v. BMW Fin. Servs. NA LLC, 707 F.3d 1136, 1139 (9th Cir. 2013) (affirming 

Carvalho); see also Reyes v. Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., 781 F.3d 1185, 1190 (9th Cir. 2015) (citing

the decisions in Carvalho and Kuxhausen favorably); Rea v. Michaels Stores Inc., 742 F.3d 1234, 

237–38 (9th Cir. 2014) (“[T]he thirty day time period [for removal] . . . starts to run from 

defendant’s receipt of the initial pleading only when that pleading affirmatively reveals on its 

face the facts necessary for federal court jurisdiction.”) (quoting Harris v. Bankers Life & Cas. 

Co., 425 F.3d 689, 691–92 (9th Cir. 2005)). Indeed, judges of this court have previously applied 

Carvalho exactly as defendant suggests it be applied here and the undersigned can discern no 

reason to deviate from that course, even if there were not binding precedent. See Cleveland v. 

West Ridge Academy, No. 1:14-cv-01825-SKO, 2015 WL 164592 (E.D. Cal. Jan. 13, 2015); 

Cleveland v. West Ridge Academy, No. 1:14-cv-00977-SKO, 2014 WL 4660990 (E.D. Cal. Sept. 

17, 2014). 

The only Ninth Circuit case plaintiff suggests runs counter to Carvalho is Cohn v. 

Petsmart, Inc., 281 F.3d 837 (9th Cir. 2002). In Cohn, the defendant had removed based on 

diversity jurisdiction. Id. at 839. The plaintiff filed a motion to remand, in opposition to which 

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the defendant submitted a settlement letter showing the plaintiff valued the case at more than 

$100,000, which was beyond the jurisdictional limit. Id. at 839–40. Nothing in Cohn, however, 

indicates the settlement letter involved was a pre-suit demand letter, making it inapposite to the 

current case. Clearly, a settlement letter sent after the complaint is filed might be relevant in 

demonstrating either the amount in controversy or the defendant’s awareness thereof. However, 

binding circuit precedent specifically instructs both that a pre-suit demand letter cannot constitute 

“other paper” within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1446(b) and that such a document cannot be 

read in context with an indeterminate complaint to create a hybrid removal period. See Carvalho, 

629 F.3d at 885–86.

CONCLUSION

Based on the reasons set forth above, plaintiff’s motion to remand (Doc. No. 7) is denied.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: September 15, 2016 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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