Opinion ID: 669097
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Discretionary Concerns

Text: 31 Because the district court failed to engage in any analysis of the discretionary factors available to it in this case, we must remand for consideration of section 1367(c). In the interest of judicial economy, however, we briefly discuss the issue of discretion here. 32 The dichotomy between a federal court's power to exercise supplemental, or pendent, jurisdiction and its discretion not to exercise such power was originally articulated in Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 725-27, 86 S.Ct. at 1138-39. See also Cohill, 484 U.S. at 349, 108 S.Ct. at 618-19. Supplemental jurisdiction has since been codified in section 1367. 10 Under the language of section 1367, whenever a federal court has supplemental jurisdiction under section 1367(a), that jurisdiction should be exercised unless section 1367(b) or (c) applies. 11 The breadth of discretion afforded federal courts in these cases has been codified by section 1367(c). 12 Specifically, it provides for four occasions when a federal court may decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction otherwise within its power. See 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1367(c). The remaining considerations articulated in Gibbs, however, have not become useless to federal courts in exercising this discretion. Rather, while supplemental jurisdiction must be exercised in the absence of any of the four factors of section 1367(c), when one or more of these factors is present, the additional Gibbs considerations may, by their presence or absence, influence the court in its decision concerning the exercise of such discretion. Such factors include judicial economy, convenience, fairness to the parties, and whether all the claims would be expected to be tried together. Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 725-26, 86 S.Ct. at 1138-39. 33 We have examined two possible bases of supplemental jurisdiction under which the district court has the power to hear the state-law claims of both the Georgia Plaintiffs and the Alabama Plaintiffs against Bates. The district court should now decide whether any of the factors listed in section 1367(c) applies to this case, so as to allow it to exercise its discretion not to hear these state-law claims. If the court decides that it has the discretion, under section 1367(c), to decline jurisdiction in this case, it should consider the traditional rationales for pendent jurisdiction, including judicial economy and convenience, in deciding whether or not to exercise that jurisdiction.III. CONCLUSION 34 The district court dismissed a COBRA claim by the Georgia Plaintiffs against Bates. That being the only federal claim against Bates, the court then dismissed the remaining state-law claims against Bates. However, the memorandum opinion did not clearly articulate whether the district court dismissed on the basis of lack of diversity jurisdiction, absence of power to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, or its discretion not to exercise otherwise permissible supplemental jurisdiction. We find that the district court was correct in holding that there is no diversity jurisdiction in this case. However, the district court had the power to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the claims against Bates on one of two bases. First, supplemental jurisdiction could have been linked to the dismissed COBRA claim against Bates. Secondly, the COBRA claim against Patterson, still pending in federal court, could have been the anchor for supplemental jurisdiction. Although we find that the district court had the power to exercise jurisdiction in this case, we believe that the discretionary aspects of the exercise of such jurisdiction are best left to the district court in the first instance. Therefore, we REVERSE in part and REMAND the case to the district court for such a determination.