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Pre-Service Removal In The Forum Defendant's Arsenal, Saurabh Vishnubhakat

Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first academic defense of pre-service removal in diversity cases by forum-state defendants under the “properly joined and served” language of 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b). Pre-service removal has proliferated nationally in recent years. Appellate courts, however, have been silent on the issue for two reasons: First, orders that remand a case to state court are statutorily non-reviewable on appeal. Second, cases retained in federal court and litigated to final judgment are highly unlikely, for reasons of judicial economy, to be voided for de novo readjudication in state court. After tracing the development of the removal statute and …