Juan Manuel Pintando v. Miami-Dade Housing, (11th Cir. 2007)

Text

---

[P U B L IS H ]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

F O R THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED

U .S . COURT OF APPEALS

E L E V E N T H CIRCUIT

S e p t e m b e r 25, 2007

N o s. 06-12953 & 06-13184 T H O M A S K. KAHN

N o n - A r g u m e n t Calendar CLERK

D . C. Docket No. 04-22856-CV-AJ

JUAN MANUEL PINTANDO,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

MIAMI-DADE HOUSING AGENCY,

Defendant-Appellee.

A p p e al from the United States District Court

fo r the Southern District of Florida

(S ep tem b er 25, 2007)

B efo re WILSON, PRYOR and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges.

P E R CURIAM:

T h is case presents the question of whether the district court is divested of

su b ject-m atter jurisdiction when a plaintiff amends his complaint so as to omit the f ed e r al law claim that originally gave rise to the federal court's supplemental ju risd ictio n of the plaintiff's remaining state law claims. Because we find that the d istrict court lacked jurisdiction over the case after the plaintiff amended his co m p lain t, we vacate the summary judgment order and remand this case to the d istrict court to be dismissed without prejudice.

I. BACKGROUND A p p e lla n t Juan Manuel Pintando filed his original complaint in the Southern D is tr ic t of Florida alleging the Miami-Dade Housing Authority ("MDHA") had v io lated (1) Florida's Whistle-blower Act, Fla. Stat. Ann. § 112.3187; (2) Florida's C iv il Rights Act, Fla. Stat. Ann. § 760.01, et seq.; and (3) Title VII of the Civil R ig h ts Act of 1964, 42U.S.C. § 2000e, et seq. The complaint alleged that the d istrict court had supplemental jurisdiction over the state law claims. 28U.S.C.

§ 1367.

After the MDHA moved for summary judgment on all counts, Pintando m o v e d to amend his complaint pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a) in order to "drop his federal law claim under Title VII . . . so that he may continue to pursue only his state law claims." The district court granted the motion to am en d , and Pintando filed an amended complaint asserting only violations of state law . Although no violation of federal law was alleged in the amended complaint, P in tan d o continued to claim that the district court had supplemental jurisdiction o v er the case.

The district court granted summary judgment to MDHA on both state law c la im s . In its order, the district court acknowledged that Pintando's amended c o m p la in t did not contain a federal law claim, but concluded that the court retained su p p lem en tal jurisdiction over the remaining state law claims. After Pintando's m o tio n s for a new trial, amended judgment, and recusal were denied, he filed this a p p e a l.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW W h eth er we or the district court have subject-matter jurisdiction to decide th is case is a question of law to be reviewed de novo. Williams v. Best Buy Co., 2 6 9 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir. 2001).

III. DISCUSSION Before deciding the merits of a case, we must ensure that we have ju risd ictio n . Rolling Greens MHP, L.P. v. Comcast SCH Holdings L.L.C., 374 F .3 d 1020, 1021 (11th Cir. 2004). The district court properly had jurisdiction of th e case after Pintando filed his first complaint. The Title VII claim was properly b efo re the district court, and the state law claims were part of the same nucleus of o p e ra tiv e facts that allows the district court to assert supplemental jurisdiction over th em in accord with 42U.S.C. § 1367. See United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U .S . 715, 725, 86 S. Ct. 1130, 1138 (1966).

O n ce Pintando amended his complaint, however, there no longer was a fed eral law question upon which supplemental jurisdiction could rest. The q u e stio n before us is whether the district court continued to possess subject-matter ju risd ictio n over Pintando's state law claims after he amended his complaint to no lo n g er include any federal law claim.

The statute authorizing supplemental jurisdiction specifies that a district co u rt "may decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a claim if . . . the d istrict court has dismissed all claims over which it has original jurisdiction." 28 U .S .C . § 1367(c)(3) (emphasis added). A district court therefore has the discretion to continue to exercise jurisdiction over state law claims in a case even after d ism issin g the federal claim that created the original jurisdiction. See Palmer v. H o s p . Auth., 22 F.3d 1559, 1568 (11th Cir. 1994). If Pintando's amended co m p lain t were analogous to a district court dismissal of Pintando's federal claims, th en it would be within the district court's discretion to continue to exercise su p p lem en tal jurisdiction over Pintando's state law claims. However, this analogy d o es not hold. A s a general matter, "[a]n amended pleading supersedes the former p le ad in g ; the original pleading is abandoned by the amendment, and is no longer a p art of the pleader's averments against his adversary." Dresdner Bang AG, D resd n er Bank AG in Hamburg v. M/V Olympia Voyager, 463 F.3d 1210, 1215 (1 1 th Cir. 2006) (citation and quotation omitted); Fritz v. Standard Sec. Life Ins.

C o ., 676 F.2d 1356, 1358 (11th Cir. 1982) ("Under the Federal Rules, an amended c o m p la in t supersedes the original complaint."). In this case, once the amended c o m p la in t was accepted by the district court, the original complaint was s u p e r ce d e d and there was no longer a federal claim on which the district court co u ld exercise supplemental jurisdiction for the remaining state law claims.

In a similar situation, the Supreme Court recently held that "when a plaintiff files a complaint in federal court and then voluntarily amends the complaint, courts lo o k to the amended complaint to determine jurisdiction." Rockwell Int'l Corp. v. U n ited States, 549 U.S., 127 S. Ct. 1397, 1409 (2007). Rockwell concerned, in p art, whether the Court should look at the plaintiff's original complaint or the a m e n d e d complaint to determine if certain statutory jurisdictional prerequisites w ere met. Id. at 1408-09. The Supreme Court concluded that the withdrawal of a lle g a tio n s in an amended complaint which had formed the basis of federal ju risd ictio n defeats jurisdiction. Id. R o ck w ell cites two other circuits in support of this proposition. In Wellness C m ty . Nat'l v. Wellness House, 70 F.3d 46 (7th Cir. 1995), the plaintiff filed an o r ig in a l complaint in federal court alleging both state and federal claims and then a m e n d e d the complaint to only include the state law claims. Id. at 48. The district co u rt concluded that it could exercise supplemental jurisdiction because the o rig in al complaint had asserted a federal question. Id. at 48-49. The Seventh C ircu it reversed on appeal because the amended complaint had superseded the o rig in al complaint and thus "there was no federal claim to which [the] state claims co u ld be `supplemental.'" Id. at 50. In Boelens v. Redman Homes, Inc., the Fifth C ir cu it also found that jurisdiction must be determined by looking at the amended c o m p la in t and concluded that "the plaintiff must be held to the jurisdictional co n seq u en ces of a voluntary abandonment of claims that would otherwise provide fed eral jurisdiction." 759 F.2d 504, 506-08 (5th Cir. 1985).

Although this circuit has not addressed this issue in a published opinion,1 we fo llo w Rockwell and agree with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits that we must look to Pintando's amended complaint to determine whether we have subject-matter ju risd ictio n .2 When Pintando amended his complaint and failed to include a Title 1 This issue has been addressed in an unpublished case. Riley v. Fairbanks Capital Corp., 222 Fed. Appx. 897 (11th Cir. 2007) (unpublished).

2 Cases removed from state to federal court under 28U.S.C. § 1447(c) are treated differently. In those cases, the district court must look at the case at the time of removal to V I I claim or any other federal claim, the basis for the district court's subject-matter ju risd ictio n ceased to exist, and the district court should have dismissed Pintando's state claims without prejudice. See Scarfo v. Ginsberg, 175 F.3d 957, 962 (11th C ir . 1999) (noting that if a "district court determines that subject[-]matter ju risd ictio n over a plaintiff's federal claims does not exist, [the] court[] must d ism iss a plaintiff's state law claims.").

IV. CONCLUSION B e ca u s e we find that the district court did not have subject-matter ju r is d ic tio n over Pintando's state-law claims, we VACATE the summary judgment o rd er and REMAND the case to be dismissed without prejudice.

determine whether it has subject-matter jurisdiction. Later changes to the pleadings do not impact the court's exercise of supplemental jurisdiction. See Poore v. America-Amicable Life Ins. Co. of Tex., 218 F.3d 1287 (11th Cir. 2000) (holding that the district court erred in not determining whether the amount in controversy necessary to create diversity jurisdiction was met at the time of removal); Behlen v. Merrill Lynch, Phoenix Inv. Partners, Ltd., 311 F.3d 1087 (11th Cir. 2002) (extending Poore and holding that the district court must determine whether a federal question exists at the time of removal using the original complaint rather than after removal under an amended complaint that dropped the federal claim). The Supreme Court noted that "removal cases raise forum-manipulation concerns that simply do not exist when it is the plaintiff who chooses a federal forum and then pleads away jurisdiction through amendment." Rockwell Int'l Corp., 549 U.S. atn.6, 127 S.Ct at 1409 n.6 (2007).

---