Opinion ID: 773386
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Spielman's Individual Damages Claim

Text: 20 Invoking St. Paul, Spielman argues that the Tax Board's ruling was a subsequent event that cannot be factored into the court's amount-in-controversy analysis. Here Spielman attempts to draw an analogy between the facts in this case and those in our own precedent, Coventry Sewage Assoc. v. Dworkin Realty Co., 71 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 1995). In Coventry Sewage, the defendant refused to pay the plaintiff for sewer-main usage after a service-fee increase. The plaintiff sued for approximately $75,000, basing that amount on invoices provided by the local county water authority. After the complaint was filed, the water authority discovered that it had misread the defendant's water meters. Correction of this error left less than $10,000 in dispute. Id. at 3. 21 We found that the water authority's correction of its meter-reading error was a subsequent event under St. Paul. In summarizing the rationale for this holding, we said: 22 In the instant case, an independent third party with otherwise no connection to the case made an apparently non-obvious error so that the amount-in-controversy at the time of filing, in fact, exceeded the jurisdictional minimum. Coventry had no reason to know that its claimed amount of damages was in error. Moreover, the reduction of the amount in controversy resulted from acts occurring wholly after the action commenced. 23 Id. at 8. Spielman argues that we should exercise jurisdiction here based on a similar rationale. We decline. 24 Coventry Sewage is inapposite. Unlike the water authority in Coventry Sewage, the Tax Board did not reduce an initial assessment of the damages amount that exceeded the jurisdictional minimum. Here there was considerable question at the outset as to whether Spielman's damages amount met the jurisdictional minimum--a question that the trial judge raised but deferred resolution of when he issued the stay. Spielman included as damages $10,820 in taxes that he owed independently of any act or omission by Genzyme Development, and he boosted his claim over the $50,000 jurisdictional minimum by adding $11,270.82 from a source he never identified. The state Tax Board ruling thus confirmed what had been apparent earlier: Spielman's attempt to meet the jurisdictional minimum was in vain from the beginning. 4 25