Opinion ID: 178903
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The district court's refusal to exercise supplemental jurisdiction

Text: In the present case, the district court considered several factors in deciding whether to exercise supplemental jurisdiction. The court first evaluated whether the retirees had engaged in forum manipulation, concluding that they had. In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that the retirees (1) voluntarily dismissed their complaint in Gamel I after failing to obtain a temporary restraining order; (2) filed an identical lawsuit in state court on the same day that they voluntarily dismissed their complaint in Gamel I; and (3) decided to amend their complaint to eliminate all federal-law claims only after the City removed the second lawsuit to federal court. The district court also evaluated whether any of the other Carnegie-Mellon factors weighed in favor of retaining supplemental jurisdiction over the retirees' state-law claims, but concluded that none did. Unlike in Harper, where the district court had invested significant time in the litigation before the plaintiff removed all federal-law claims from his complaint, see 392 F.3d at 211-12, the retirees in this case deleted their federal-law claims within four days after the City removed the litigation to federal court. Moreover, the court here had not overseen discovery and there was no potentially dispositive motion for summary judgment filed at the time the retirees moved to remand the case to state court. The district court, on the other hand, acknowledged that it had gained some familiarity with the retirees' federal-law claims as a result of having ruled on the temporary restraining order in Gamel I. But the court concluded that because the federal-law claims were no longer at issue, judicial economy would not be served by exercising supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the City has been inconsistent in its position regarding the district court's jurisdiction over the retirees' complaints. In Gamel I, the City sought to dismiss the retirees' federal-law claims as a matter of law, expecting that the district court would then decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims. The City later removed the retirees' identical state-filed complaint to federal court, now arguing that the district court should exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the same claims that the City had originally urged the district court not to hear. Ultimately, the district court found that the only factor that weighed in favor of exercising supplemental jurisdiction was the retirees' forum manipulation, but decided that this factor alone was not sufficient to warrant retaining jurisdiction over the state-law claims. It concluded that exercising supplemental jurisdiction would not foster judicial economy and would result in ... needlessly resolving issues of state law. Based on the district court's analysis as set forth above, we conclude that it properly considered the relevant Carnegie-Mellon factors in deciding not to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the retirees' state-law claims. We therefore find no abuse of discretion in remanding the case back to the state court.