Denied: plaintiff’s motion to join an additional defendant since the court held it was an attempt to defeat diversity jurisdiction

In this breach of contract/bad faith action, the plaintiff had rented his house to a man named Alphonso Hyman. According to the plaintiff, Hyman had vandalized the house and stopped making rental payments, which resulted in foreclosure. The house was insured by a policy issued by defendant Metropolitan Property and Casualty Insurance Company. The plaintiff filed a claim for vandalism damage with Metropolitan, which was denied, and this suit followed. The plaintiff initially filed the suit in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County. Metropolitan subsequently removed the case to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. The plaintiff then filed a motion to join Hyman as an additional defendant. The Western District Court denied the motion, reasoning that the facts that comprised the basis for the breach of contract claim against Hyman were well known to the plaintiff when he filed his complaint. The court considered that district courts have generally concluded that, if a plaintiff was aware, at the time the complaint was filed, of the activities of the non-diverse defendant, the later attempt to join that defendant will be viewed as an attempt to defeat diversity. Because the plaintiff had not learned anything new about Hyman that he did not already know when the action was filed, the motion was denied.

_{Case Law Alerts, 3rd Quarter, July 2015}

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