Avenatti v. Fox News Network LLC, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 20101 (3rd Cir. July 21, 2022) (Rendell, C.J.) The Court here considers when a court may drop a party under Rule 21 in order to create diversity. Apparently, what happened here was that after removal, plaintiff Avenatti added a party so that there would be no diversity of citizenship and the matter would have to be returned to state court. The Third Circuit said that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in dropping the “spoiler” defendant. This maintained diversity of citizenship. The District Court applied the Hensgens factors, and the Third Circuit found this was appropriate. Rule 21 gave the District Court discretion to drop Hunt, who was the employee of Fox News. It was Fox News that was sued in a defamation claim. The Ccourt said that the District Courts may exercise discretionary authority to drop non-diverse parties added without leave of court after removal. Litigants may not employ procedural tactics to deny the District Court’s ability to reject new parties whose presence would defeat diversity. Once jurisdiction has vested in the federal court, which it did here upon removal from state court, careful scrutiny should be applied to any post-removal events threatening to wrench that jurisdiction away.
