Rather than specify a dollar amount, state court plaintiffs may plead damages "in an amount to be determined at trial" or "in excess of the jurisdictional limits of all lower courts." These statements do not establish an amount in controversy. If the defendants wish to remove to federal court under a statute imposing an amount-in-controversy requirement most commonly the diversity jurisdiction statute, which requires an amount in controversy exceeding $75,000, "exclusive of interest and costs," 28 U.S.C.
To do so, the defendants must file a notice of removal containing "a plausible allegation that the amount in controversy exceeds the jurisdictional threshold." Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co.
Owens filed a motion for remand, asserting that the removal petition inadequately demonstrated that the
amount in controversy exceeded $5,000,000.
(8) Unfortunately, the circuit courts are currently split regarding how the
amount in controversy requirement is met for post-arbitration motions to vacate, confirm, or modify awards.
Although Congress established a jurisdictional threshold, it did not establish statutory guidelines for determining when the monetary requirement is satisfied, and therefore judicial interpretation has guided federal courts' determination of the
amount in controversy. (7) In St.
the total cost of production compared to the
amount in controversyThe three jurisdictional prerequisites for diversity removal, then, are: a civil lawsuit, an appropriate
amount in controversy, and diversity of citizenship between the parties.
Philip Morris Co., Inc., the district court of the Southern District of California ruled that each member of a class action law suit must meet the
amount in controversy requirement, despite the Judicial Improvement Act's creation of supplemental jurisdiction.
(13) Congress recognized that under pre-CAFA law "class action lawyers typically misuse[d] the jurisdictional threshold to keep their cases out of federal court" and noted as an example of such "misuse" the inclusion in class action complaints of stipulations purporting to limit the
amount in controversy to less than the jurisdictional minimum.
(4) One of the jurisdictional requirements is that the class action must involve an
amount in controversy in excess of five million dollars.
(1) To effect that purpose, CAFA expanded federal diversity jurisdiction, allowing putative class action lawsuits to be litigated in federal court if (1) the parties are minimally dwerse; (2) (2) the putative class contains at least 100 members; (3) and (3) the aggregate
amount in controversy exceeds $5 million.
Code in an attempt to limit the number of cases that can be removed to federal court.[1] Although these revisions took a number of forms, perhaps the most significant restriction was an increase in the
amount in controversy requirement for diversity jurisdiction from $10,000 to $50,000.