Opinion ID: 28979
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Background: Removal from State Courts of Louisiana

Text: 11 Subject to specific exceptions not here relevant, Louisiana prohibits a plaintiff from alleging or demanding a specific dollar amount of damages, limiting the prayer for relief to such damages as are reasonable in the premises. 8 To accommodate the situation when the removal sought is from a Louisiana court and subject matter jurisdiction is grounded in diversity of citizenship, we have modified the usual rule for determining whether the amount in controversy is present. In such Louisiana situations, we permit the party seeking to maintain federal jurisdiction to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000. 9 When the case is one that has been removed from state court, such party may satisfy this burden in either of two ways: (1) by demonstrating that it is facially apparent from the petition that the claim likely exceeds $75,000 or (2) by setting forth the facts in controversy — preferably in the removal petition, but sometimes by affidavit — that support a finding of the requisite amount. 10 12 We have not yet clearly established — and, indeed, might not be able to establish — the precise quantum of evidence required to preponderate and thereby show an amount in controversy sufficient to establish diversity jurisdiction. In De Aguilar 11 — a case situated identically to this one — we stated that, because the plaintiffs, in a bold effort to avoid federal court, [] specifically allege[d] that their respective damages will not exceed the jurisdictional amount, 12 13 [t]he preponderance burden forces the defendant to do more than point to a state law that might allow the plaintiff to recover more than what is pled. The defendant must produce evidence that establishes that the actual amount in controversy exceeds [the jurisdictional threshold]. 13 14 The category of state laws that the De Aguilar panel appears to have had in mind are those embodying the familiar maxim that a court may award more in damages than the plaintiff demands. 14 This maxim contemplates the existence of a state statute or doctrine that entitles a plaintiff to recover more than he has demanded. Louisiana is such a state, and has been at least since 1960 when its Code of Civil Procedure was enacted. Before that, essentially every state court petition concluded with an express prayer for general and equitable relief, which was considered to be a prerequisite for obtaining a judgment in excess of or different from the plaintiff's express prayer or demand. Enactment of the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure eliminated the need for such a talismanic incantation, thenceforth treating every petition as though it contains such a prayer and expressly permitting a judgment to exceed the prayer or demand: 15 Except [for a judgment by default], a final judgment shall grant the relief to which the party in whose favor it is rendered is entitled, even if the party has not demanded such relief in his pleadings and the latter contain no prayer for general and equitable relief. 15 16 Thus, if a defendant in a Louisiana suit can produce evidence sufficient to constitute a preponderance showing that, regardless of the style or wording of the demand, the amount in controversy actually exceeds § 1332's jurisdictional threshold, that Louisiana case will then resemble any other amount-in-controversy case, bringing into play the foundational rule of removal jurisdiction: The plaintiff can defeat diversity jurisdiction only by showing to a legal certainty that the amount in controversy does not exceed $75,000. 16 And we have emphasized that this is not a burden-shifting exercise; rather, the plaintiff must make all information known at the time he files the complaint. 17 17 Finally, our special accommodation for testing the amount in controversy in Louisiana cases in which the quantum of the plaintiffs' demand could not have been alleged in dollars because of LCCP art. 893's proscription, has engendered the recognition that the federal district court's jurisdictional-amount calculus must include attorney's fees when an applicable Louisiana statute allows the award of such fees. 18 Until 1995, however, those cases involved individual actions, not class actions.