Hollingsworth LLP files amici brief in support of federal jurisdiction for out-of-state defendants
news | June 23, 2014
On June 20, 2014, Hollingsworth LLP filed an amici brief on behalf of the Access to Courts Initiative and the American Coatings Association urging the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to reject the “presumption against federal removal” and deny a remand motion filed by an individual plaintiff against the Federal Express Corporation in an employment discrimination lawsuit. As amici explain, the presumption against removal is based upon seventy-year old dicta from Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp. v. Sheets, 313 U.S. 100 (1941) that the United States Supreme Court specifically disavowed in Breuer v. Jim’s Concrete of Brevard, Inc., 538 U.S. 691, 698 (2003) (“whatever apparent force [the anti-removal presumption] might have claimed when Shamrock was handed down has been qualified by later statutory development). Moreover, the history, intent, and plain language of Article III of the United States Constitution amply demonstrate that out-of-state defendants have an affirmative right to defend themselves in a neutral federal forum.
Firm partner Eric Lasker filed the brief in support of the Access to Courts Initiative’s broader goal of increasing the number of diversity cases removable to federal court, thereby addressing the distortion of neutral justice and state judicial integrity fueled by forum shopping of the Plaintiffs’ Bar.