Opinion ID: 1038530
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiff’s Waiver of Claim Amount

Text: The remand ordered by the district court was explicitly based upon Rodriguez’s waiver of any claim in excess of $5 million. Recently, however, and after the district court entered its order, the Supreme Court held that such a waiver was ineffective. In Standard Fire Insurance Company v. Knowles, 133 S. Ct. 1345 (2013), the Court held that a lead plaintiff of a putative class could not foreclose a defendant’s ability to establish the $5 million amount in controversy by RODRIGUEZ V. AT&T MOBILITY SERVICES 7 stipulating prior to class certification that the amount in controversy is less than $5 million. Id. at 1347. The Court reversed the district court’s remand order because plaintiff’s stipulation was not binding on the class and therefore could not resolve the amount-in-controversy question. Id. at 1350. The Court explained, “a plaintiff who files a proposed class action cannot legally bind members of the proposed class before the class is certified.” Id. at 1349. Thus, a plaintiff’s “precertification stipulation does not bind anyone but himself.” Id. Requiring courts to “ignore a nonbinding stipulation,” the Court held, “does no more than require the federal judge to do . . . what the statute requires, namely ‘aggregat[e]’ the ‘claims of the individual class members.’” Id. at 1350 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(6) (alteration in original)). In our case, Rodriguez acknowledges that the district court’s remand order must be vacated in light of Standard Fire. His waiver no longer has legal effect. Because the order to remand the case to state court relied solely on that waiver, it must be vacated and the matter remanded to district court for further consideration.