Miedema v. Maytag Corporation, No. 06-12430. Non-Argument Calendar.

• Citation: 450 F.3d 1322
• Decision Date: 05 June 2006
• Docket Number: No. 06-12430. Non-Argument Calendar.
• Parties: Leslie MIEDEMA, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. MAYTAG CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

450 F.3d 1322

Leslie MIEDEMA, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. MAYTAG CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 06-12430. Non-Argument Calendar.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

June 5, 2006.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Stephen P. Warren, Holland & Knight, LLP, Miami, FL, Laurie Webb Daniel, Holland & Knight, Atlanta, GA, for Maytag Corp.

Donald A. Blackwell, Anania, Bandklayder, Blackwell & Baumgarten, Miami, FL, for Miedema.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before CARNES, WILSON and PRYOR, Circuit Judges.

WILSON, Circuit Judge:

We previously accepted Defendant-Appellant Maytag Corporation's petition for permission to appeal, pursuant to the Class Action Fairness Act ("CAFA"), Pub.L. No. 109-2, 119 Stat. 4 (2005) (codified in scattered sections of 28 U.S.C.), from the district court's order granting Plaintiff-Appellee Leslie Miedema's motion to remand for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. On appeal, Maytag contends that the district court erred by placing the burden of proving subject matter jurisdiction on Maytag and resolving all doubts in favor of remand. Maytag further objects that, even if it did have this burden, the district court applied too high a standard of proof with respect to CAFA's amount in controversy requirement. Finally, Maytag claims that the district court erroneously relied upon a post-removal amended complaint in reaching its decision. After careful review of the record and the briefs, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

In October of 2005, Leslie Miedema filed a class action suit against Maytag in Florida state court, alleging that various "ranges/ovens" designed and manufactured by Maytag contained a defective motorized door latch assembly that allowed heat to escape and damage other range/oven components. Specifically, Miedema pleaded that she brought her action "on behalf of herself and all other similarly situated consumers of [Maytag] ranges/ovens that incorporate the defective motorized door latch assembly, as a statewide class action, pursuant to Fla. R. Civ. P. 1.220(b)(2) or (b)(3)." She included in the putative class "[a]ll purchasers of Maytag ranges/ovens, in the State of Florida, bearing [certain model numbers]," and stated her belief that there were "thousands of members of the above-described class." Miedema asserted causes of action for negligence, breach of express warranty, and violation of Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, demanding "compensatory damages, [] pre- and post-judgment interest, costs, and any and all such further relief to which she is entitled."

Within a month of being served with Miedema's complaint, Maytag filed a notice of removal in federal district court, invoking 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332, 1441, 1446, and 1453. According to Maytag, the class action was removable under CAFA because Miedema and Maytag were of diverse citizenship, the putative class consisted of thousands of Floridians, and the amount in controversy exceeded, in the aggregate, $5,000,000. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1332(d), 1453(a), (b). In support of its claim regarding the amount in controversy, Maytag submitted a declaration by its information analyst Jodi Jarrett. Jarrett declared that she had researched those range/oven models identified in Miedema's description of the putative class, that a total of 6,729 ranges/ovens bearing the alleged model numbers had been sold in Florida, and that the total value of those ranges/ovens was $5,931,971.

Miedema responded by moving to remand for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. She argued that Maytag had the burden of establishing subject matter jurisdiction by a preponderance of the evidence, and that Maytag had failed to carry that burden with respect to the amount in controversy. For example, Miedema stated, Jarrett's declaration did not specify whether each of the 6,729 ranges/ovens sold incorporated the allegedly defective motorized door latch assembly at issue, what Maytag meant by "total value," or how that "total value" was calculated. Maytag opposed the motion to remand, arguing, among other things, that any vagueness in its determination of the amount in controversy was due to the breadth of Miedema's complaint. The district court, noting the existence of disagreement among courts as to which party bears the burden of establishing subject matter jurisdiction under CAFA, ordered additional briefing on the issue, as well as on whether the requisite amount in controversy had been established. Miedema then proceeded to depose Jodi Jarrett, and submitted this deposition as additional evidence of Maytag's failure to establish that more than $5,000,000 was in controversy.

After receiving the parties' additional submissions, the district court issued an order granting Miedema's motion to remand for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.¹ The district court adhered to the traditional rule in the CAFA context that a removing defendant bears the burden of establishing subject matter jurisdiction. The court then determined that Maytag did not satisfy that burden, finding that the Jarrett declaration and deposition were "flawed" in this regard. Although Miedema also contributed to the uncertainty surrounding the amount in controversy, the court noted, it must ultimately resolve all doubts in favor of remand. We granted Maytag's subsequent petition for permission to appeal the remand order, see 28 U.S.C. § 1453(c), and now reach the merits of that appeal.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

We review de novo the district court's decision to remand for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Evans v. Walter Indus., Inc., 449 F.3d 1159, 1162, No. 06-11974, 2006 WL 1374688, at *2 (11th Cir. May 22, 2006); see 28 U.S.C. § 1453(c)(1) (notwithstanding 28 U.S.C. § 1447(d), court of appeals may review remand order where case was removed under CAFA).

III. DISCUSSION

A. CAFA Review of Remand Orders

1. 7-Day Application Rule

The CAFA permits a court of appeals to accept an application to appeal if the application is made to the court of appeals "not less than 7 days after entry of the [district court's] order" granting or denying a motion to remand a class action to the state court from which it was removed. 28 U.S.C. § 1453(c)(1) (emphasis added). Several circuits have declined to read the "not less than" language literally, concluding that it was a typographical error, or that such a reading would be illogical. See Pritchett v. Office Depot, Inc. 420 F.3d 1090, 1093 n. 2 (10th Cir.2005) ("The statute should read that an appeal is permissible if filed `not more than' seven days after entry of the remand order."); Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1309, AFL-CIO v. Laidlaw Transit Servs., Inc., 435 F.3d 1140, 1146 (9th Cir.2006) (following Pritchett and also excluding, in calculating the 7-day period, intermediate weekends and holidays under Fed. R.App. P. 26(a)(2)); cf. Patterson v. Dean Morris, L.L.P., 444 F.3d 365, 368 n. 1 (5th Cir. 2006). While we have not addressed this issue directly, it is clear that we did not read § 1453(c)(1) literally in Evans, where we stated that § 1453(c)(1) "provides for an `application' to the court of appeals . . . within 7 days of the district court's remand order." Evans, 449 F.3d at 1162, 2006 WL 1374688, at *2 (emphasis added). We now reaffirm that construction of § 1453(c)(1), for to read it literally would produce an absurd result: there would be a front-end waiting period (an application filed 6 days after entry of a remand order would be premature), but there would be no back-end limit (an application filed 600 days after entry of a remand order would not be untimely). When applying the plain and ordinary meaning of statutory language "produces a result that is not just unwise but is clearly absurd, another principle comes into the picture. That principle is the venerable one that statutory language should not be applied literally if doing so would produce an absurd result." Merritt v. Dillard Paper Co., 120 F.3d 1181, 1188 (11th Cir.1997). Here, the district court's remand order was entered on April 4, 2006. Maytag filed its petition for permission to appeal (i.e., its "application") with the circuit clerk on April 12, 2006— six days later, when the intervening weekend is excluded under Fed. R.App. P. 26(a)(2). Accordingly, there was no violation of § 1453(c)(1) when we granted Maytag's petition.

2. 60-Day Review Limit

The CAFA requires us to "complete all action on [this] appeal, including rendering judgment, not later than 60 days after the date on which such appeal was filed, unless an extension is granted . . . ." 28 U.S.C. § 1453(c)(2).² In granting Maytag's petition for permission to appeal, we directed the parties to address the question of "whether the sixty-day period is measured from the date the petition is filed, or instead is measured from the date of entry of this order." Evans, however, has now decided that issue, holding that "the 60-day period begins to run from the date when the court of appeals granted the appellants' application to appeal and thus filed the appeal." 449 F.3d at 1162, 2006 WL 1374688, at *2. We granted Maytag's petition for permission to appeal on April 25, 2006. Thus, so long as our ruling on this appeal is issued within 60 days of that date (assuming no extension is granted), our ruling is timely.

B. Burden of Establishing Subject Matter Jurisdiction

The CAFA authorizes removal of a "class action" in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 1446,³ "without regard to whether any defendant is a citizen of the State in which the action is brought, except that such action may be removed by any defendant without the consent of all defendants." 28 U.S.C. § 1453(b). A "class action" includes a civil action which, like Miedema's, is filed under a "State . . . rule of judicial procedure authorizing an action to be brought by 1 or more representative...