Opinion ID: 770968
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Houston District Court's Proceedings

Text: 15 Once the six cases were consolidated in the Houston Division of the Southern District, Plaintiffs filed (1) motions to remand, asserting lack of subject matter jurisdiction and procedurally defective removal, and (2) motions to strike the third-party claims or, in the alternative, to dismiss Dead Sea and its affiliated entities for fraudulent joinder, and to remand the underlying claims. Defendants contested the fraudulent joinder allegation, asserting the validity of their third-party claims againstDead Sea based on the laws of the home countries of several of the plaintiffs. As a final step, Defendants filed motions to dismiss all of the removed cases for forum non conveniens. 16 The district court addressed first whether Dead Sea's removals were proper in Jorge, Valdez, Rodriguez, and Erazo, the cases in which Texas law required leave of state court to serve the third-party petitions. The court concluded that all removals were premature and, thus, defective for want of leave. Deferring to the authority of the state court to determine in the first instance whether third-party joinder was appropriate, the district court remanded Rodriguez and Erazo. On appeal, neither party challenges this decision to remand. 17 In Jorge and Valdez, however, the district court noted that magistrate judges had issued post-removal orders granting leave to implead Dead Sea into federal court pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 14. The district court assumed that Dead Sea had, thus, validly been made a party in federal court and would remain a party on remand to state court. Speculating that Dead Sea would immediately exercise its presently mature right to again remove the actions to federal court, the district court concluded that remand would be futile and denied remand. 18 The district court also denied remand in the final two cases, Delgado and Isae (the under thirty days cases), in neither of which had leave to make service on Dead Sea been required under Texas law. 18 Invoking the doctrine of forum non conveniens, the district court then dismissed all four cases that remained unremanded -- the two over thirty days cases and the two under thirty days cases. 19 As conditions precedent to dismissal, the district court required Defendants (including third- and fourth-party defendants) to (1) waive all jurisdictional and certain limitation-based defenses, (2) permit the dismissed plaintiffs a reasonable period within which to conduct discovery before trial in their home countries, and (3) agree to satisfy those plaintiffs' concerns with respect to the enforceability of foreign judgments that might be rendered against Defendants. In addition, the district court permanently enjoined the dismissed plaintiffs from commencing or causing to be commenced in the United States any DBCP action and from intervening in Rodriguez and Erazo, the two remanded cases. Finally, the district court agreed that it would re-assume jurisdiction, on proper motion, if the highest court in any foreign country should affirm a dismissal for lack of jurisdiction over any action commenced by a dismissed plaintiff in his home country or his country of injury. 20