Opinion
CIVIL ACTION NO: 03-1564 SECTION: "J"(1)
September 8, 2003
MINUTE ENTRY
Before the Court is plaintiffs' Motion to Remand. Rec. Doc. 5. Defendants oppose the motion. The motion was originally set for hearing on briefs on August 6, 2003, but following a review of the record in this matter, the Court ordered plaintiffs to plead with more particularity not later than August 30, 2003, at which point the Court would take the matter under advisement.
As discussed in the Court's Minute Entry entered August 14, 2003 (Rec. Doc. 14), plaintiffs argued in their motion to remand that this matter was improvidently removed because no basis for federal subject matter jurisdiction was present. Defendants had removed the case contending that diversity jurisdiction was present because the non-diverse defendants were fraudulently joined.
As also noted in the Court's prior minute entry, plaintiffs' petition seeks damages caused by defendants' alleged fraudulent and/or negligent conduct in selling a Summer Pay Annuity Retirement program ("SPAR") to plaintiffs, St. Tammany Parish schoolteachers. Case law referenced by both sides recognizes that an agent may be personally liable for damages caused by intentional or negligent misrepresentations which he knows or should know to be false. See, e.g. Kimball v. Modern Woodmen of America. 939 F. Supp. 479 (M.D. La. 1996);McCollum v. Harbor View Townhouses, Inc. 428 So. 28 846 (La.Ct.App. 5th Cir. 1983). However, the original petition included allegations against "defendants" in globo, and did not identify specific acts by specific defendants which would state a cause of action under Louisiana law.
Plaintiffs have amended their complaint to include specific allegations that individual, non-diverse defendants made misrepresentations, that they knew to be false in inducing the plaintiffs to purchase SPAR annuities. See Amended Complt., ¶ 62 et seq. Accordingly, the Court finds that these non-diverse defendants are not fraudulently joined, and thus diversity jurisdiction is not present in this case. Accordingly,
IT IS ORDERED that plaintiffs' Motion to Remand (Rec. Doc. 5) should be and is hereby GRANTED, and this matter is hereby REMANDED to the 22nd Judicial District Court for the Parish of St. Tammany.