The Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit sua sponte reviewed diversity jurisdiction and remanded the case to the district court to resolve the jurisdictional issue by determining the citizenship of the plaintiff. In Star v. Centimark Corp., 596 F3d 354 (6th Cir. 2010) plaintiff appealed the entry of summary judgment against it and in its jurisdictional statement said only that the district court had jurisdiction. Defendant failed to include a jurisdictional statement in its brief, thus indicating its satisfaction with plaintiff’s statement. The Court of Appeals said that it must rely on the district court to determine if diversity jurisdiction in fact exists.
The district court record showed that plaintiff was a limited partnership whose partners included two limited liability companies and on “French S.A.R.L.” Plaintiff did not provide the citizenship of the partner LLCs and the citizenship of the “French S.A.R.L” is unclear for diversity purposes. Originally defendant moved to dismiss on the ground that the complaint failed to establish diversity. The complaint was amended but it only stated that no members of the LLCs had a physical presence in Pennsylvania where the defendant corporation was solely a citizen. The district court denied the motion to dismiss as moot because defendant no longer contested jurisdiction.
The appellate court said that the district court had an obligation to go further even though defendant waived the issue and said
We conclude that the case should be remanded to the district court with instructions to resolve the jurisdictional issue by determining V & M’s citizenship. We base our decision to remand on two factors: (1) the complexity of the jurisdictional facts in this case, because of the members and sub-members (and potential sub-sub-members) that comprise V & M; and (2) the fact that no controlling precedent exists regarding how to determine the citizenship of a French S.A.R.L. for diversity-jurisdictional purposes. In such unusual circumstances, this matter would be best reviewed by the district court in the first instance. (596 F.3d at 357)