Back To The Well With Pre-Service Removal

It's been a while since we've discussed pre-service removal, other than to mention a recent case. Our last major post was What's up with Removal Before Service," back in May 2011.

Since then, we pointed out an important statutory development – that when Congress rewrote other parts of the removal statute (28 U.S.C. §1441(b)) in 2011, it left intact the language that, read according to its terms (often referred to as "plain meaning" in the cases), allows pre-service removal. That's important, because the major argument against pre-service removal is that it's "gamesmanship" (as if joining 99 disparate plaintiffs in a single complaint isn't) that leads to "absurd" results that Congress could not have intended. "However, one person's 'gamesmanship' is strategy to another." Francis v. Great West Casualty Co., 2018 WL 999679, at *2 (M.D. Ga. Feb. 21, 2018).