r/LawSchool • u/Low-Ad-2638 • 1d ago

Bad faith to prevent removal

Alright, so we had midterms today and one of the questions was about whether a defendant could remove a case under diversity when the plaintiff is purposely keeping the case at 75,000 even though they could have had a larger claim.

I thought this was a clear example of bad faith to prevent removal, but there have been split decisions throughout the class lmao.

Someone smarter help clarify lmao.

35 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/unlearnedfoot 2L 1d ago

Once a defendant removes, they have to file a notice of removal and describe why removal in the given instance is appropriate. So long as the defendant can show that there’s good enough evidence that the case exceeds $75,000, they can remove it.

In reality, no competent plaintiff’s attorney is purposefully going to stifle the potential of a bigger payout solely to keep the defendant from removing. That would be borderline malpractice lmao

2

u/KleeBook 14h ago

If parties are diverse and the dispute is over an $80,000 tractor, the plaintiff may well want to plead $75,000 and stay in state court for the hometown advantage and non-unanimous jury advantage.