Court Opinion

ID: 8876587
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 19:16:14.32662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:23.519036
License: Public Domain

KERR, District Judge
(dissenting).
With due deference to the well stated general principles of law in the majority opinion, I am unable to agree with the reference of those rules to plaintiff’s pleading in this case. The rules are simple; their application is complex. As I read the complaint I cannot discern separate and independent claims for relief. I would hold that this case was improvidently removed to the federal court.
I start with the premise that every doubt as to the right of removal under Section 1441(c) should be resolved in favor of remand. Absent separate and independent claims the case is not removable.1 We agree on that fundamental rule. Our difference of opinion is in the application of the pertinent test succinctly stated in the Finn case:
“where there is a single wrong to plaintiff, for which relief is sought, arising from an interlocked series of transactions, there is no separate or independent claim or cause of action under § 1441(c).” 2
Plaintiff alleges in its complaint only a single claim, namely, its contractual right to have the defendant Braun and his subcontractors and suppliers, exercise their superior engineering skill and experience to design, engineer, construct and equip “a plant * * * that would manufacture 100 tons per day of sodium sulfate (commonly referred to as salt cake) and 150 tons per day of hydrochloric acid (also known as muriatic acid) using as a basic process a process known as the Cannon process * *
One single wrong to plaintiff is alleged in the complaint, namely, defendant breached its contract with plaintiff- by designing, engineering, constructing and equipping a plant which “when completed would not function or operate and could not be put to its intended use of manufacturing salt cake and muriatic acid”. The facts alleged to have constituted the *621breach of contract gives rise to only one, complete, indivisible cause of action.3
The wrong for which plaintiff seeks relief arises from an interlocked series of transactions which are alleged with some particularity, naming each of the defendants and stating the various fundamental and fatal defects, defaults, and acts of negligence in the work of the defendant and its subcontractors and suppliers that combined to produce an unsatisfactory and inoperable plant. The complaint describes the sundry components which were necessary to fulfill the construction contract and for which the several defendants were responsible. These separate controversies do not make separate and independent causes of actions.
Plaintiff alleges one claim for damages against defendant Braun in the aggregate sum of $3,600,000 and itemizes the amounts of damages attributable and allocable to the other defendants. Plaintiff does not seek to recover a money award from the various individual defendants in addition to complete relief from Braun. It appears to me that if plaintiff were to recover a judgment against Braun for a sum of money considerably less than the amount of damages it claims to have sustained from the breach of the construction contract, plaintiff could not thereafter sue the other defendants to recover the balance up to $3,600,000. Plaintiff asks judgment against Braun for $3,600,000 and “out of that amount” it seeks joint and several judgments against the other named defendants.
As I examine the complaint I cannot escape the conviction that plaintiff has alleged but one cause of action, claim or actionable wrong, viz., a breach of contract. I detect several controversies involving Braun and its subcontractors and suppliers as parties to that breach, but I envision only one possible recovery to which any or all of the defendants could be required to contribute. I would reverse the decision of the trial court and direct that the action be remanded for trial in the state court for failure of complete diversity.

. American Fire & Casualty Co. v. Finn, 341 U.S. 6, 71 S.Ct. 534, 95 L.Ed. 702 (1951).

. Id. at page 14, 71 S.Ct. at page 540.

. “A cause of action does not consist of facts, but of the unlawful violation of a right which the facts show. The number and variety of the facts alleged do not establish more than one cause of action so long as their result, whether they be considered severally or in combination, is the violation of but one right by a single legal wrong. The mere multiplication of grounds of negligence alleged as causing the same injury does not result in multiplying the causes of action.” Baltimore Steamship Company et al. v. Phillips, 274 U.S. 316, 321, 47 S.Ct. 600, 602, 71 L.Ed. 1069 (1927).