Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp.
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
All 60 flagged citations have been read. The 4 confirmed treatments listed below also address unequal removal burdens, doubts about a presumption against removal, and the Class Action Fairness Act's allowance for aggregating qualifying class claims. Courts continue to cite Martin's appellate-review holding and its anti-aggregation rule outside CAFA. Ullman v. Safeway Insurance also reports that Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Services, Inc. changed the rule for supplemental jurisdiction over class members.
60 later cases cite Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp.; 60 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp.?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Overruled in part
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Rejected the removal-notice evidence requirement attributed to Martin: a plausible allegation of the amount in controversy suffices until the plaintiff contests it or the court questions it.
Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
Reading Tenth Circuit precedent to require proof of the amount in controversy in the notice of removal itself, the District Court granted Owens' remand motion. Dart's declaration, the District Court held, could not serve to keep the case in federal court. The Tenth Circuit, as the District Court read Circuit precedent, "has consistently held that reference to factual allegations or evidence outside of the petition and notice of removal is not permitted to determine the amount in controversy." App. to Pet. for Cert. 26a, and n. 37 (citing Laughlin v. Kmart Corp.,50 F.3d 871, 873 (1995); Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp.,251 F.3d 1284, 1291, n. 4 (2001); Oklahoma Farm Bureau Mut. Ins. Co. v. JSSJ Corp.,149 Fed.Appx. 775 (2005)). ... In sum, as specified in § 1446(a), a defendant's notice of removal need include only a plausible allegation that the amount in controversy exceeds the jurisdictional threshold. Evidence establishing the amount is required by § 1446(c)(2)(B)only when the plaintiff contests, or the court questions, the defendant's allegation. ... And if the Circuit precedent on which the District Court relied misstated the law, as we hold it did, then the District Court's order remanding this *558case to the state court is fatally infected by legal error.
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Superseded by statute
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Held that CAFA permits aggregation of qualifying class members' claims toward its $5 million threshold, displacing Martin's anti-aggregation rule in that setting.
Buscema v. Wal-Mart Stores East LP · United States District Court for the District of New Mexico · filed
Applying this principle, the Tenth Circuit in Martin held that attorneys’ fees in a class action cannot be aggregated and attributed entirely to the named plaintiffs in order to meet § 1332’s amount in controversy requirement. 251 F.3d at 1293. The Court noted in a footnote, however, that its holding might not apply if the state statute under which fees are sought allows for those fees to be awarded solely to the class representatives. Id. at 1293 n.7. After Martin was decided, CAFA also changed the federal diversity jurisdiction statute to allow for class members in a qualifying class action to aggregate their claims in order to meet the newly established $5,000,000 amount in controversy requirement in § 1332(d). See § 1332(d)(6).
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Criticized
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Criticized the unequal burdens on plaintiffs and removing defendants under Martin, while retaining the requirement to prove contested jurisdictional facts.
McPhail v. Deere & Co. · Tenth Circuit · filed
Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp., 251 F.3d 1284, 1290 (10th Cir. 2001) (citing cases). Thus, when the proponent of federal jurisdiction is the party that does not need it, mere allegations suffice; but when the proponent of federal jurisdiction is the party in whose interest diversity jurisdiction was created, actual proof of jurisdictional facts is required, at a stage in the litigation when little actual evidence is yet available. This set of rules bears no evident logical relation either to the purpose of diversity jurisdiction, or to the principle ... that those who seek to invoke federal jurisdiction must establish its prerequisites.
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Questioned
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Questioned Martin's general placement of the removal burden on defendants in light of Breuer, predicting that the Tenth Circuit might adopt a less restrictive approach.
Bruning v. City of Guthrie · United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma · filed
Relatively recent Supreme Court precedent also impacts the issue in other ways. Of the cases which have concluded a separate filing is necessary to show consent, virtually all of them, at least in this Circuit, have relied on statements in multiple Tenth Circuit cases to the effect that there is a presumption against removal, that removal statutes are to be construed narrowly, in light of the role of federal courts as limited tribunals, and that the burden is on the defendant to show a basis for jurisdiction. See, e.g., Pritchett v. Office Depot Inc., 420 F.3d 1090, 1094-95 (10th Cir.2005) (“It is well-established that statutes conferring jurisdiction upon federal courts, and particularly removal statutes, are to be narrowly construed in light of our constitutional role as limited tribunals.”); Martin v. Franklin Capital Corp., 251 F.3d 1284, 1290 (10th Cir.2001) (party seeking removal has the burden of proof to establish jurisdiction); ... In Breuer v. Jim’s Concrete of Brevard, Inc., 538 U.S. 691, 123 S.Ct. 1882, 155 L.Ed.2d 923 (2003), the Court upheld the removal of a Fair Labor Standards Act case to federal court notwithstanding the existence of a somewhat ambiguous phrase in the pertinent removal statute. ... This language seems plainly inconsistent with the suggestion that the burden to show a basis for removal is always on the removing party, or with the related formulation that all doubts are to be resolved against removal.8 It appears that the Tenth Circuit has not had occasion to consider the impact of Breuer on its removal jurisprudence, but Breuer suggests that, when it does, the result is likely to be a formulation less restrictive of removal jurisdiction.
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