Case:    Robertson v. Exxon Mobil Corp.
             United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
             No. 15-30920, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 22953 (12/31/15)

Plaintiffs, 189 natural persons who live, work, or own real property in a certain part of Harvey, Louisiana, or formerly did so, filed suit in Louisiana state court against various oil companies, along with several contractors and landowners, alleging personal and property damages stemming from oil pipe-cleaning operations from 1958 through 1992. Plaintiffs claim the dirty pipes contained radioactive and otherwise hazardous compounds known to present serious health risks, which became airborne, settled onto the Plaintiffs' properties, and absorbed into the ground or surface water. Plaintiffs contend that Defendants long knew or should have known of these hazards, but that Plaintiffs were not on notice of the contamination until 2001, when landowner-defendants posted a warning sign. Plaintiffs seek compensation for a wide variety of harms—including physical injuries, contracted diseases, medical expenses, lost wages, emotional distress, and property damage and diminution of value—as well as punitive damages and restitution of part of a nine-figure verdict previously awarded to the landowners in a separate lawsuit.

Defendants removed the state court suit to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, claiming the suit was a removable "mass action" under the Class Action Fairness Act ("CAFA"), 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d). Plaintiffs then filed a motion to remand, arguing Defendants had not met their burden of proving CAFA's basic jurisdictional requirements and, in the alternative, three exclusions or exceptions to CAFA jurisdiction applied. The district court granted Plaintiffs' motion to remand and concluded neither Plaintiffs' complaint nor Defendants' evidence showed that any one Plaintiff's claim satisfied CAFA's $75,000 individual amount-in-controversy requirement. The Fifth Circuit then granted Defendants' petition for permission to appeal.

The Fifth Circuit noted CAFA expanded federal district courts' original jurisdiction to include "class actions" and "mass actions" in which there is minimal diversity and the aggregate amount in controversy exceeds $5 million. A mass action, defined as "any civil action . . . in which monetary relief claims of 100 or more persons are proposed to be tried jointly on the ground that the plaintiffs' claims involve common questions of law or fact, except that jurisdiction shall exist only over those plaintiffs whose claims in a mass action satisfy the jurisdictional amount requirements under subsection (a)." Subsection (a), in turn, limits diversity jurisdiction to "civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000, exclusive of interest and costs." Because the party seeking removal bears the burden of establishing federal jurisdiction, a putative mass action removed under CAFA must be remanded if the defendants cannot establish that (1) the aggregate amount in controversy exceeds $5 million and (2) at least one plaintiff's claim satisfies the $75,000 individual amount in controversy.

The district court held Defendants had not met their burden of showing the individual amount in controversy as to any plaintiff, and did not address the aggregate requirement. The Fifth Circuit reversed the district court's opinion noting that a removing defendant can meet its burden of demonstrating the amount in controversy by showing that the amount is "facially apparent" from the plaintiffs' pleadings alone, or by submitting summary-judgment-type evidence. The required "demonstration concerns what the plaintiff is claiming (and thus the amount in controversy between the parties), not whether the plaintiff is likely to win or be awarded everything he seeks." The Fifth Circuit also clarified that the burden of proving the amount in controversy does not mean that the removing party cannot ask the court to make common-sense inferences about the amount put at stake by the injuries the plaintiffs' claim. To this end, the court referred to Plaintiffs' response to one interrogatory, in which Plaintiffs produced a chart detailing each individual plaintiff's claimed damages and asserting that Defendants' conduct caused them to suffer a wide variety of specific harms, some of which, the court found common sense dictated, place more than $75,000 at stake. Noting specific examples of individual plaintiffs who claim to have suffered, among other harms, emphysema and the wrongful death of her husband from lung cancer, or who developed prostate cancer and a host of other ailments, the court held it was more likely than not that those plaintiffs seek to recover more than $75,000 and that the district court erred when it ordered this case remanded on the ground that no plaintiff satisfied the individual amount-in-controversy requirement. Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit reversed the grant of Plaintiffs' motion to remand and remanded the case to the district court to address Plaintiffs' remaining jurisdictional arguments.

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