Barlow v. Colgate Palmolive Co.

Plaintiffs filed suit against Colgate and others, asserting that each of the defendants' products had at some point exposed them to asbestos. Colgate removed to federal court on the basis of diversity citizenship. The district court remanded to federal court. The federal removal statute immunizes from review any order remanding to state court a case removed to federal court, with an exception for certain civil rights cases or suits against federal officers. Colgate argued that a federal court may strike a remand order and retrieve a remanded case from its state cousin as a sanction against plaintiffs' counsel for making misrepresentation to the federal court related to the existence of subject-matter jurisdiction. In the face of Congress' explicit direction to federal courts that an order remanding a case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction after it has been removed "is not reviewable on appeal or otherwise, " 28 U.S.C. 1447(d), the court rejected Colgate's collateral attack on the remand orders and affirmed the order of the district court insofar as it ruled that it lacked jurisdiction.View "Barlow v. Colgate Palmolive Co." on Justia Law