This post comes from the Cozen O'Connor side of the blog.

We've been blogging about "removal before service" since we announced it to the world in 2007.  It's a procedural tactic that enables defendants to remove cases to federal court despite the "forum defendant rule," which ordinarily prohibits a defendant from removing to federal court a case that, while it meets the requirements of diversity jurisdiction under 21 U.S.C. § 1332(a), is also pending in the home state of the defendant. Here's the rule as codified in 21 U.S.C. § 1441(b) (2):

A civil action otherwise removable solely on the basis of the jurisdiction under section 1332(a) of this title may not be removed if any of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen of the State in which such action is brought.

(Emphasis added).

We emphasized the phrase "properly joined and served" because that's the basis for "removal before service." Defendants have had success, in certain courts before certain judges, arguing that this phrase should be interpreted according to its plain terms and that, therefore, a defendant who has not yet been served can remove a case on diversity jurisdiction grounds even if the case is in its home state court.

The court in Young v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 98736 (D. Del. June 27, 2017), is one of the courts that accepts this argument. Young was one of 33 cases in the Eliquis drug litigation that plaintiffs' lawyers had filed in the Superior Court of Delaware. Each plaintiff and the two defendants, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer, were citizens of different states, suggesting that the cases were ripe for removal to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. But BMS and Pfizer are citizens of Delaware (as are so many corporations), implicating the forum defendant rule's bar to removal of diversity cases.

But, as the Young court put it, all of this occurred "before Plaintiffs served (or, due to Superior Court procedures, could have served) their complaints on Defendants." Id. at *2. The defendants had an opportunity. And they took it. They immediately removed the cases to the United States District Court for the District of Delaware where they had the good fortune of drawing a judge who had previously blessed "removal before service"—and did so again:

The undersigned judge has had several occasions to consider this issue. Having done so again, the Court sees no reason here to depart from its previously-adopted reasoning. See Munchel, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 128971, 2012 WL 4050072; Hutchins, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4719, 2009 WL 192468. As in Munchel and Hutchins, the Court views the plain and unambiguous language of § 1441(b) as controlling. Section 1441(b)(2) provides that a case in which there is diversity jurisdiction "may not be removed if any of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen of the State in which such action is brought." Here, there is diversity jurisdiction, but because there was no service on any defendant before removal, none "of the parties in interest properly joined and served as defendants is a citizen" of "the State in which [this] action" was brought, i.e., Delaware. 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b)(2) (emphasis added).

Id. at *5 (emphasis in original). And so we have yet another decision approving "removal of service" under the plain terms of the statute.

In this instance, the Court suggested that it had an additional reason to rule the way it did. The plaintiffs had already engaged in forum-selection tactics of their own. The cases were originally filed in California state court, not Delaware. The defendants, who were not California citizens, promptly removed the cases to a federal court in California and started the process to transfer the cases to the Eliquis MDL, a place that plaintiffs most certainly did not want to be. So—and here it comes—the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed all 33 cases. They then re-filed the cases, the very same day, in Delaware state court, a court from which they hoped the forum defendant rule would hamstring defendants from once again removing the cases to federal court. Id. at *1-2.

This history of forum shopping clearly influenced the Court's decision on plaintiffs' motion to remand:

Additionally, given the history of these cases — including that Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed cases originally filed in California state court, seemingly (at least in part) to avoid transfer to the MDL — removal is not a nonsensical result. To the contrary, the totality of circumstances strongly supports exercising discretion to deny Plaintiffs' motions to remand.

Id. at *4-5.

So the "removal before service" option lives on, at least in some courts. And Young offers precedent for an argument that "removal before service" may be even more appropriate when the history of the case suggests that the plaintiff had already engaged in some sort of procedural maneuvering before the case was even removed.

This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.