Leonard v. Enterprise Rent a Car

• Decision Date: 18 January 2002
• Docket Number: No. 00-10273.,00-10273.
• Citation: 279 F.3d 967
• Parties: Shannon LEONARD, Theresa Moore, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ENTERPRISE RENT A CAR, National Car Rental, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

279 F.3d 967

Shannon LEONARD, Theresa Moore, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ENTERPRISE RENT A CAR, National Car Rental, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 00-10273.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

January 18, 2002.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Richard Norman, Timothy J. Crowley, Crowley & Douglas, LLP, Houston, TX, Peter H. Burke, Joe R. Whatley, Jr., Whatley Drake, L.L.C., Birmingham, AL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

James Goldberg, Michael Kahn, Folger, Levin & Kahn LLP, San Francisco, CA, D. Frank Davis, Gerald P. Gillespy, E. Clayton Lowe, Jr., Burr & Forman, Fournier J. Gale, III, Jarred O. Taylor, II, Lorrie L. Hargrove, Maynard, Cooper & Gale, Jim H. Wilson, Lynne Stephens O'Neal, Leitman, Siegal & Payne, P.C., John E. Goodman, Matthew H. Lembke, Bradley, Arant, Rose & White, LLP, C. Lee Reeves, Sirote & Permott, P.C., Robin H. Graves, Lightfoot Franklin & White LLC, Birmingham, AL, Joseph David Steadman, Sims, Graddick & Dodson, Mobile, AL, Charles A. Stewart, III, Bradley, Arant, Rose & White LLP, Montgomery, AL, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama.

Before TJOFLAT and BIRCH, Circuit Judges, and VINING^*, District Judge.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

Shannon Leonard and Theresa Moore, as representatives of a class of Alabama citizens, appeal the district court's dismissal of their diversity suit against seven car rental companies for failure to state a claim for relief. We conclude that the district court should have dismissed the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the amount in controversy does not exceed $75,000, as required under 28 U.S.C. § 1332.¹ We therefore vacate the court's judgment and direct the district court to remand the case to the state court.

I.

On October 2, 1997, the plaintiffs brought this class action in the circuit court of Coosa County, Alabama. The plaintiffs, and the class members they purport to represent, are Alabama residents² who rented vehicles from one or more of the defendant car rental companies and purchased automobile insurance or supplemental coverage as part of that rental. Their complaint contained three counts.³ Count one alleged that the defendants sold such insurance without being licensed to do so by Alabama or any other state and thus were unjustly enriched; count two alleged that the defendants knowingly concealed or misrepresented material facts regarding the insurance; and count three alleged that the defendants conspired to injure plaintiffs by selling them the insurance. On each count, the plaintiffs requested "judgment for all actual and punitive damages ... attorneys' fees, and any other relief to which the plaintiff class may be entitled."⁴

The defendants removed the case to the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama within the thirty-day time period specified by 28 U.S.C. §§ 1441, 1446.⁵ In the notice of removal, they represented that the amount in controversy satisfied the "in excess of $75,000" jurisdictional requisite of 28 U.S.C. § 1332. Then, in their answers to the complaint, the defendants asserted, as an affirmative defense, that the complaint failed to state a claim for relief. The court treated such defense as a motion to dismiss filed under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, granted it, and entered a final judgment dismissing the case as to each defendant with prejudice.⁶ The plaintiffs now appeal.⁷

II.

In their brief on appeal, the plaintiffs question whether the amount in controversy in this case exceeds $75,000 and, thus, whether the district court had subject matter jurisdiction. The plaintiffs point out that Davis v. Carl Cannon Chevrolet-Olds, Inc., 182 F.3d 792 (11th Cir.1999), precluded the district court from including their request for attorney's fees in calculating the amount in controversy, and that Cohen v. Office Depot, Inc., 204 F.3d 1069 (11th Cir.2000), precluded the court from aggregating the punitive damages claimed by each class member in order to reach the in excess of $75,000 amount.⁸

The defendants, in their briefs, do not respond to the plaintiffs' suggestion that the district court may have lacked subject matter jurisdiction. Presumably, they rely on their notice of removal which argued that punitive damages could properly be aggregated and that the complaint's allegation that "all fees collected from the class for rental insurance" and its prayer for "equitable relief" sufficed to establish the $75,000 requirement.

Because we are obligated to notice the district court's lack of subject matter jurisdiction if such is the case, we address the jurisdictional questions the plaintiffs' brief has presented. See Williams v. Best Buy Co., 269 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir.2001). Dismissal of a case brought under 28 U.S.C. § 1332 is proper where the pleadings make it clear "to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than the jurisdictional amount ..." St. Paul Mercury Indem. Co. v. Red Cab Co., 303 U.S. 283, 289, 58 S.Ct. 586, 590, 82 L.Ed. 845 (1938). Where, however, it is unclear whether the jurisdictional amount has been satisfied, due to an incomplete development of the record by the district court, the proper course of action is to remand the case for factual findings on the actual amount in controversy. Williams, 269 F.3d at 1321 (applying this approach where, as here, the defendant asserted the requisite amount in controversy in its notice of removal, and the plaintiff did not challenge the assertion in the district court). Finally, we note that for purposes of this challenge to the subject matter jurisdiction of the district court, the critical time is the date of removal — October 10, 1997. See Poore v. American-Amicable Life Ins. Co. of Tex., 218 F.3d 1287, 1289-91 (11th Cir.2000). If jurisdiction was proper at that date, subsequent events, even the loss of the required amount in controversy, will not operate to divest the court of jurisdiction. See id. at 1291.

A removing defendant bears the burden of proving proper federal jurisdiction. Williams, 269 F.3d at 1319-20. Where a plaintiff fails to specify the total amount of damages demanded, as is the case here,⁹ a defendant seeking removal based on diversity jurisdiction must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the amount in controversy exceeds the $75,000 jurisdictional requirement. Tapscott v. MS Dealer Serv. Corp., 77 F.3d 1353, 1356-57 (11th Cir.1996), overruled on other grounds by Cohen, 204 F.3d 1069. "A conclusory allegation in the notice of removal that the jurisdictional amount is satisfied, without setting forth the underlying facts supporting such an assertion, is insufficient to meet the defendant's burden." Williams, 269 F.3d at 1319-20. The defendants in this case have failed to carry their burden; all they did was to fill the notice of removal with the type of unsupported assumptions we have held to be inadequate.

First, the defendants claimed that, as with similar fraud cases, the plaintiffs in this action stood to be awarded punitive damages in excess of $75,000. They further insisted that any such award must be aggregated for determining the amount in controversy. In Cohen v. Office Depot, Inc., 204 F.3d 1069 (11th Cir.2000), we held that "for amount in controversy purposes a class punitive damages claim must be allocated pro rata to each class member." Id. at 1074. While Cohen was decided after the defendants removed this case to federal court, the law that controlled the decision in Cohen predated the removal. In Cohen, we explained that the controlling law of this circuit on the question of punitive damages had been set forth by the Fifth Circuit case of Lindsey v. Alabama Tel. Co., 576 F.2d 593 (5th Cir.1978),¹⁰ and overruled the contradictory portion of this circuit's decision in Tapscott v. MS Dealer Serv. Corp., 77 F.3d 1353, 1358-59 (11th Cir.1996). Where an intracircuit conflict of law exists, the earliest panel opinion is controlling. See United States v. Dailey, 24 F.3d 1323, 1327 (11th Cir.1994). Lindsey was thus the applicable law of this circuit when defendants removed this case in 1997 and controls our decision today, requiring us to consider the punitive damages on a pro rata basis, and divide the total punitive damages claim by the total number of class members. Although both the size of the class¹¹ and the amount of damages sought by the class were left undefined by the defendants, making it impossible for us to perform the precise calculation, we can conclude that without the benefit of aggregation, defendants would be unable to carry their burden of proof that the punitive damages are likely to exceed $75,000. This case was therefore not removable to federal court based on the plaintiffs' claims for punitive damages.

Second, the defendants speculated that any award of equitable relief to the plaintiffs would impose costs on each defendant exceeding $75,000. The plaintiffs' claim for equitable relief cannot satisfy the amount in controversy requirement. The value of injunctive or declaratory relief for amount in controversy purposes is the monetary value of the object of the litigation that would flow to the plaintiffs if the injunction were granted. See Ericsson GE Mobile Communications, Inc. v. Motorola Communications & Elecs., Inc., 120 F.3d 216, 218 (11th Cir.1997). If we determine that the monetary value of the injunctive relief to the class plaintiffs is "too speculative and immeasurable to satisfy the amount in controversy requirement" we need not even reach the question of whether such relief must be considered in the aggregate or pro rata. Id. at 221-22. The plaintiffs in this case have always been free to refuse to purchase the insurance offered by the defendants. Whether or not an injunction is granted in this case, the plaintiffs will be able to avoid paying for the insurance. Thus, the injunctive relief, unlike the...