Opinion ID: 7393
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fraudulent Joinder Criteria

Text: 17 The removing party bears the heavy burden of proving that non-diverse defendants have been fraudulently joined to defeat diversity, either by showing that (1) there has been outright fraud in the plaintiff's recitation of jurisdictional facts, or (2) there is no possibility that the plaintiff would be able to establish a cause of action against the non-diverse defendants in state court. 19 The instant case involves the latter inquiry: whether, as a matter of law, there [is] no reasonable basis for predicting that the plaintiff might establish liability against a named in-state defendant in state court. 20 If, after resolving all disputed questions of fact and all ambiguities in the controlling state law in favor of the non-removing party (Burden), there is no possibility that the state court would recognize a valid cause of action against the non-diverse defendants (Riney and Davis), then those defendants have been fraudulently joined and must be ignored for purposes of diversity jurisdiction. 21 That being the case, the district court had proper subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate Burden's claims, 22 so we turn now to an analysis of the state law pertinent to the instant case. 18