Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/298

 546US1

Unit: $U10

[09-04-08 12:14:58] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 546 U. S. 81 (2005)

87

Opinion of the Court

issued a few months later, id., at 22a–40a, and the District Court entered ﬁnal judgment for the defendants the same day, id., at 41a. Six days after the District Court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment, but before ﬁnal judgment was entered, the Roches moved to remand the case to the state court, alleging for the ﬁrst time the absence of federal subject-matter jurisdiction. 3 Speciﬁcally, the Roches al­ leged that Lincoln “is not a Texas Corporation, but a Part­ nership with one of its partners residing in the Common­ wealth of Virginia.” App. 226.4 The District Court denied the remand motion, concluding that Lincoln is a Texas corpo­ ration and that removal was proper because the requisite complete diversity existed between all plaintiffs and all de­ fendants. App. to Pet. for Cert. 84a–93a. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed and instructed the District Court to remand the case to the state court. 373 F. 3d, at 622. Although recognizing that Lincoln is a Texas citizen and a proper party to the action, id., at 620–621, the Court of Appeals observed that “Lincoln oper­ ates under many different structures,” id., at 617. Describ­ ing Lincoln as “the nominal party and ultimate parent com­ pany,” the appellate court suspected that an unidentiﬁed 3 The Roches state that they preferred to litigate in state court for two principal reasons: Virginia does not permit summary judgment based on afﬁdavits or deposition testimony, and Virginia has not adopted the rule of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U. S. 579 (1993), to assess expert evidence. Brief for Respondents 3, and n. 1. 4 Confusion about Lincoln’s structure is understandable. Real estate businesses typically operate through a web of afﬁliated entities, see Brief for Real Estate Roundtable et al. as Amici Curiae 6–13, and certain Lincoln-afﬁliated responders to the Roches’ discovery inquiries stated that Lincoln was a partnership, e. g., App. 175, 176, 179. In response to the Roches’ motion to remand, Lincoln proffered its 1979 Texas incorporation papers and an afﬁdavit attesting to its status as a Texas corporation. Id., at 238–246. That matter is no longer debated; at oral argument, counsel for the Roches acknowledged that Lincoln is a Texas corporation. Tr. of Oral Arg. 40–41.