Opinion
Case No. 14 C 3113
05-12-2014
JACKSON NATIONAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, a Michigan corporation, Plaintiff, v. LEONARD LOPRIENO and FRANCES LOPRIENO, Illinois residents, Defendants.
MEMORANDUM ORDER
This Court has belatedly received a copy of the Complaint in this action, accompanied by the $100 fine that it had imposed for violation of this District Court's LR 5.2(f). This memorandum order is issued sua sponte to address a flaw in the Complaint.
Because plaintiff Jackson National Life Insurance Company ("Jackson") has invoked the diversity of citizenship branch of federal subject matter jurisdiction, its complaint is required to identify the states of citizenship of all the litigants as well as the over-$75,000 amount in controversy. Here there is no question as to that jurisdictional amount, and Complaint ¶ 3 identifies both facets of Jackson's corporate citizenship under 28 U.S.C. 1332(c)(1). But Complaint ¶ 4 says only this as to the two individual defendants:
Defendants, Leonard and Frances Loprieno, are husband and wife, residing in Bloomingdale, DuPage County, Illinois.
Fully a decade ago Adams v. Catrambone, 359 F. 3d 858, 861 n.3 (7th Cir. 2004) reconfirmed our Court of Appeals' earlier mandate that "when the parties allege residence but not citizenship, the district court must dismiss the suit." This Court nevertheless remains loath to inflict that Draconian result on a party, forcing the preparation and filing of a new lawsuit and the payment of another filing fee even though it seems likely that an individual party's place of residence coincides with his or her state of citizenship (as is most often, though not always, the case). Accordingly no dismissal will be ordered here unless the flawed jurisdictional allegation is left uncured by an appropriate amendment to the Complaint on or before May 23, 2014.
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Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge