10-8035, 10-8036, 10-8039, 10-8040, 10-8041, 10-8042 & 10-8048 Koral v. Boeing Co.

Listen to this article

Civil Procedure
Class actions; removal

Individual suits cannot be removed to federal court based only on an expectation that the cases will be consolidated into a class action.

“The proposal must be to the court in which the suits are pending, but if the plaintiffs’ statement to the state court that we quoted was a proposal it was a proposal made to that court, for it was of course in the state court that Boeing moved for dismissal on the ground of forum non conveniens and thus provoked the plaintiffs’ response in which the quoted statement appears. And the proposal can be implicit, as where a single complaint joins more than 100 plaintiffs’ claims without proposing a joint trial, Bullard v. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Ry., supra, 535 F.3d at 762; for the assumption would be that a single trial was intended-one complaint, one trial, is the norm. But we think the plaintiff’s statement falls just short of a proposal, as it is rather a prediction of what might happen if the judge decided to hold a mass trial. It would be odd to think that plaintiffs could not make a telling response to a motion for dismissal of a suit on the ground of forum non conveniens without thereby having forfeited their chosen forum; by arguing against dismissal, they would be arguing for it.”

Affirmed.

10-8035, 10-8036, 10-8039, 10-8040, 10-8041, 10-8042 & 10-8048 Koral v. Boeing Co.

Petitions for Permission to Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Posner, J.

Full Text