Federal Court Dismisses Negligence Claim Brought by Fan against 49ers
A judge from the Northern District of California has declined to hear negligence and breach of contract claims brought by a fan against the Forty Niners Football Co. and its general partner John York after the fan was attacked in the Candlestick Park parking lot after a game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders.
Specifically, the federal court dismissed plaintiff Daniel Long’s claim without prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction
Long was attending a game on Aug. 12, 2011. After the game, while walking to the parking lot, his companion was attacked by other fans and reportedly beaten unconscious. After trying to rescue him, Long was shot four times by the men.
Long sued, alleging that the 49ers should have searched cars entering the parking lot for weapons, as some NFL teams do, and warned him that the parking lot was unsafe.
On the first point, Long noted that the 49ers “knew that other NFL teams had successfully implemented a policy to search vehicles entering their parking lots for the purpose of attending a professional football game or for the purpose of tailgating with respect to those games.”
As for the 49ers’ awareness that the parking lot was unsafe, the plaintiff claimed that because the 49ers were allegedly aware of a stabbing that occurred a year earlier at a game, the team “knew about the probability that weapons would be brought into the parking lot for the 2011 preseason game, that they would not be detected and that they would be used in the parking lot.”
The plaintiff’s lawsuit sought to invoke this federal court’s diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. Long was a resident of California while the individual defendant John York was a resident of Ohio. Furthermore, the Forty Niners Football Company, LLC “is a Delaware limited liability company.”
While the defendants did not move to dismiss this claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, the court noted that it has an “independent obligation to address sua sponte whether it has subject-matter jurisdiction.” Dittman v. California, 191 F.3d 1020, 1025 (9th Cir. 1999).
As such, it noted that the plaintiff’s complaint fails “to adequately allege the citizenship of defendant Forty Niners Football Company, LLC. Because an LLC is an unincorporated entity, it is treated as a citizen of every state of which its owners/members are citizens.”
Thus, the Forty Niners Football Company LLC was deemed to be a citizen of California. “Because the plaintiff and one of the defendants are both citizens of California, complete diversity is lacking, and this court lacks subject matter jurisdiction,” the court held.
Daniel Long v. Forty Niners Football Company LLC, et al.; N.D. Cal.; No. C-13-2919 EMC, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 152438; 10/23/13
Attorneys of Record: (for plaintiff) Geoffrey Becker, LEAD ATTORNEY, Becker & Becker, Lafayette, CA. (for defendants) Matthew Stanley Conant, LEAD ATTORNEY, Lombardi Loper Conant, LLC, Oakland, CA; Kara Ann Abelson, Lombardi Loper Conant, Oakland, CA.
