Court Opinion

ID: 9448623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:41:22.885615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:30.373575
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
With deference to my brothers of the majority, I agree with Judge Hutcheson’s viewas to the teaching of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Horton v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 1961, 367 U.S. 348, 81 S.Ct. 1570, 6 L.Ed.2d 890.2 The most significant passage in that opinion, I think, is:
“The general federal rule has long been to decide what the amount in controversy is from the complaint itself, unless it appears or is in some way shown that the amount stated in the complaint is not claimed ‘in good faith.' In deciding this question of good faith we have said that it ‘must appear to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than the jurisdictional amount to justify dismissal.’ ”
“13. Id., at 289 [St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 58 S.Ct. 586, 82 L.Ed. 845]. See also Bell v. Preferred Life Assurance Society, 320 U.S. 238, 240, [64 S.Ct. 5, 88 L.Ed. 15]; Aetna Casualty Co. v. Flowers, 330 U.S. 464, 468 [, 67 S.Ct. 798, 91 L.Ed. 1024],
Chief Judge Tuttle for the majority emphasizes the following sentence:
“No denial of these allegations in the complaint has been made, no attempted disclaimer or surrender of any part of the original claim has been made by petitioner, and there has been no other showing, let alone a showing ‘to a legal certainty,’ of any lack of good faith on the part of *574the respondent in alleging that a $14,035 claim is in controversy.” 3
To me that sentence and other similar parts of the opinion mean no more than that the Court was properly pointing to facts in the case then before it which established “good faith” beyond question. There was no suggestion that such extreme facts were essential to the Court’s holding. The expression “ * * * let alone a showing ‘to a legal certainty’ ” clearly indicates that they were not so essential. To read the opinion otherwise would mean to abandon the long-established logical doctrine that jurisdiction must exist from the time it is first invoked, that is, when the suit is filed,4 and to permit jurisdiction to remain “tentative” or in limbo subject to the arbitrary determination of the claimant as to the amount which he will seek to recover by his counterclaim. Candid recognition of that incongruity may be detected in Judge Tuttle’s opinion for the majority: “But, however much this may depart from traditional notions of pleading federal jurisdiction * *
If Judge Hutcheson and I are right in our view of the teaching of the Horton opinion, there is no such departure “from traditional notions of pleading federal jurisdiction.” That much is clearly explained by the annotation in 75 Harvard Law Review 170:
“But since under Texas law the insurer was seeking to avoid a possible $14,035.00 liability, its complaint, without reference to any possible counterclaim, put the requisite amount in controversy.”
I respectfully dissent.

. It is interesting to note, however, that Judge Jones, the third member of the panel which decided the Horton case in this Court, see 275 F.2d 148, is aligned with the present majority.

. Hardware Mutual Casualty Co. v. McIntyre, 5 Cir., No. 18557, 304 F.2d 566.

. St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., 1938, 303 U.S. 283, 292, 58 S.Ct. 586, 82 L.Ed. 845; Taylor v. Anderson, 1914, 234 U.S. 74, 75-76, 34 S.Ct. 724, 58 L.Ed. 1218; Smithers v. Smith, 1907, 204 U.S. 632, 643, 27 S.Ct. 297, 51 L.Ed 656; Kirby v. American Soda Fountain Co., 1904, 194 U.S. 141, 145-146, 24 S.Ct. 619, 48 L.Ed. 911; Gulf Refining Co. v. Price, 5 Cir., 1956, 232 F.2d 25, 36.