Marple, et al v. T-Mobile Central LLC, No. 11-1490 (8th Cir. 2011)
Annotate this CaseT-Mobile Central LLC ("T-Mobile") sued Missouri municipalities for refund of certain tax payments that it had paid under protest and filed ten separate lawsuits seeking to recoup tax payments made within ten specific time periods. Appellees brought ten separate class action suits against T-Mobile in state court for passing the contested tax onto customers and sought to recover any money that the Missouri municipalities refunded to T-Mobile. At issue was whether the district court had jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act ("CAFA"), 28 U.S.C. 1332(d)(6), to remand the ten class actions to the state court from which they were removed. The court affirmed the judgment of the district court and held that there was no indication that appellees artificially divided the lawsuit to avoid the CAFA where the structure of appellees' class actions exactly mirrored the underlying ten lawsuits brought by T-Mobile and were driven by T-Mobile's own litigation decisions.
Court Description: Civil Case - Class Action Fairness Act. District court's order remanding ten lawsuits to state court is affirmed. Act does not contemplate aggregating the amounts sought in separate class actions when determining whether the matter in controversy exceeds the $5 million. Distinguishing this case from the Sixth Circuit decision in Freeman v. Blue Ridge Paper Products, Inc., individual lawsuits here were not structured to circumvent CAFA.
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