Duarte v. Donnelley

• Decision Date: 05 April 1967
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 2568.
• Parties: Richard DUARTE, Margaret Duarte, Stella Duarte, Harriet Duarte, and Diana Esteban, Plaintiffs, v. Richard Robert DONNELLEY, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Hawaii

266 F. Supp. 380

Richard DUARTE, Margaret Duarte, Stella Duarte, Harriet Duarte, and Diana Esteban, Plaintiffs, v. Richard Robert DONNELLEY, Defendant.

Civ. No. 2568.

United States District Court D. Hawaii.

April 5, 1967.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Joseph A. Ryan, Clinton I. Shiraishi, Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii, for plaintiffs.

A. Singleton Cagle, Smith, Wild, Beebe & Cades, Honolulu, Hawaii, for defendant.

DECISION ON MOTION TO REMAND

PENCE, Chief Judge.

On July 25, 1964, on the Island of Kauai—some 100 over-water miles from this court in Honolulu—plaintiffs, Richard Duarte, his wife Margaret Duarte, their two minor children Stella and Harriet, and a friend Mrs. Diana Esteban, were injured in an automobile collision with a car driven by the defendant, Richard Robert Donnelley. The plaintiffs are all citizens of Hawaii and the defendant is a citizen of Illinois.

Plaintiffs filed this tort action on February 24, 1966 in the Circuit Court of the Fifth Circuit of the State of Hawaii, i. e., on Kauai, praying for unspecified special damages plus general damages of $25,000 for each plaintiff. Service was not made upon the defendant until August 20, 1966.

On September 1, 1966, defendant filed in this court in Honolulu his petition for removal of the case to this court on the basis of his diversity of citizenship. (28 U.S.C.A. § 1441.) On September 14, plaintiffs filed a motion to remand, claiming that the case was improperly removed and not within the jurisdiction of this court in that the matter in controversy did not exceed $10,000 for any one of the above plaintiffs. An additional ground for the motion was that the doctrine of forum non conveniens should be applied since all of the plaintiffs and their witnesses reside on the Island of Kauai, and that it would be inequitable from the standpoint of costs and inconvenience to force plaintiffs to try their case in the United States District Court in Honolulu.

Attached to plaintiffs' motion were nine exhibits, consisting of doctors' and hospital bills and medical reports pertaining to the injuries of the several plaintiffs. These exhibits reflected that Richard Duarte had a $4.00 doctor bill for his first and only examination after the accident, for unspecified injuries. Mrs. Margaret Duarte apparently was injured in the chest and left arm. Her doctor's reports indicate that three days after the accident "she had a very painful left anterior chest wall condition and was unable to raise her left arm * * * and a diagnosis of Severe Muscle Contusion was made. * * * Because of continued distress in her left chest area, she was hospitalized" for nine days for extensive extra examination and was discharged from the hospital on August 11, 1964, "with the diagnosis of Severe Muscle Contusion of the Left Pectoral Muscles." Her doctor and hospital bills totaled $375.75. Stella Duarte's doctor bill was $3.00 for "slight abrasion right anterior lower leg." Harriet Duarte apparently had a one-half inch laceration on the top of the head which was repaired in the hospital emergency after the accident. Charges for this service, if any, do not appear in the record. Diana Esteban's head apparently struck the car mirror, in the collision, for which she had two office visits within the following four days, with x-rays of the skull and neurological examination, with no evidence of skull fracture or neurological injury being found. The doctor's bill for these two examinations was but $8.00. Plaintiffs' exhibits reflected no charges for Mrs. Esteban's skull x-ray, reportedly taken.

From the posture in which these exhibits were presented to this court by the plaintiffs, the court assumes, and this decision is founded in material part upon that assumption, that there has been no medical treatment of any plaintiff, then or subsequent thereto, other than as reflected in the exhibits; that no injuries were permanent; and that the plaintiffs intended the court to act upon those assumptions.

In further support of plaintiffs' motion to remand, plaintiffs have represented to this court that the maximum worth of the claims of any of the plaintiffs, as reflected by settlement negotiations with the defendant, could not exceed the sum of $6,500 for Margaret Duarte, with lesser sums for the other plaintiffs; that the highest settlement figure submitted by the defendant was $1,000 for Margaret Duarte; that thereafter plaintiffs had offered to settle Margaret Duarte's claim for $3,000, Richard Duarte's for $1,500, Harriet Duarte's for $500, Stella Duarte's for $500, and Diana Esteban's for $750.

From these representations of the plaintiffs, this court assumes, and this decision is founded in material part upon such assumption, that the plaintiffs are representing to this court that none of the plaintiffs' claims can honestly be worth more than the settlement figures; that this or any other court would be compelled to cut down or set aside as grossly excessive a judgment for any plaintiff, if such judgment exceeded the figures submitted in the plaintiffs' Supplemental Memorandum in Support of Motion to Remand.

The court also assumes from plaintiffs' memorandum that all of the above facts regarding settlement figures and plaintiffs' values were known to the defendant prior to defendant petitioning for removal.

The court assumes that all of the above representations are true and have been made by the plaintiffs in good faith, and are intended to be interpreted and acted upon by this court in the manner and to the extent indicated above.

This court has often said during informal settlement conferences in a multitude of tort cases that settlement figures are not to be construed as representing the true worth of any party's claim, nor should such figures, offered in compromise, be used as a yardstick in determining whether diversity jurisdiction can lie. The settlement figures in this case, however, were not presented to the court in the usual context but rather were representations of fact made by the plaintiffs to the court with the intendment that the court should assume that they reflect the top judgments...