Supreme Court rules on federal court jurisdiction in diversity lawsuits News
Supreme Court rules on federal court jurisdiction in diversity lawsuits

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday handed down a unanimous decision in Lincoln Property v. Roche [Duke Law backgrounder], reversing the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, holding that a lawsuit filed in state court may be removed to federal court if all parties actually named are diverse. The case involved Virginia renters who sued their landlord, a Texas-based property company, for injuries resulting from exposure to toxic mold. In ruling for the defendant, the Court emphasized that defendants must actually be joined in the suit, not merely a "real party in interest," to destroy complete diversity of citizenship. Justice Ginsburg wrote, "The potential liability of other parties was a matter plaintiffs' counsel might have assiduously explored" through further investigation. The court dismissed as "not live for adjudication" the second issue in the case [SCOTUSblog report], concerning whether a firm that does business in several states must be determined to be a citizen of any state in which one of its entities was located. Read the Court's opinion [text]. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.