time certain

In September 2007, respondents Melinda Friend and John Nhieu, two California citizens, sued petitioner, the Hertz Corporation, in a California state court. They sought damages for what they claimed were violations of California’s wage and hour laws. They requested relief on behalf of a potential class composed of California citizens who had allegedly suffered similar harms. Hertz filed a notice seeking removal to a federal court. Hertz claimed that the plaintiffs and the defendant were citizens of different States. To support its position, Hertz submitted a declaration by an employee relations manager that sought to show that Hertz’s principal place of business was in New Jersey, not in California. The declaration stated, among other things, that Hertz operated facilities in 44 States and that California accounted for 273 of Hertz’s 1,606 car rental locations, about 2,300 of its 11,230 full-time employees, about $811 million of its $4,371 billion in annual revenue, and about 3.8 million of its approximately 21 million annual transactions. The declaration also stated that the leadership of Hertz and its domestic subsidiaries is located at Hertz’s corporate headquarters in Park Ridge, New Jersey, that its core executive and administrative functions are carried out there and to a lesser extent in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and that its major administrative operations are found at those two locations. The District Court of the Northern District of California accepted Hertz’s statement of the facts as undisputed. But it concluded that Hertz was a citizen of California. Applying Ninth Circuit precedent, the court found that the plurality of each of the business activities at issue was in California. The differential between the amount of those activities in California and the amount in the next closest state was significant. The District Court consequently remanded the case to the state courts. Hertz appealed the District Court’s remand order to the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed in a brief memorandum opinion. Hertz filed a petition for certiorari, and in light of differences among the Circuits in the application of the test for corporate citizenship, the Supreme Court granted the writ. Respondents pointed out that the statute permitting Hertz to appeal the District Court’s remand order to the Court of Appeals constitutes an exception to a more general jurisdictional rule that remand orders are not reviewable on appeal. They argued that Congress intended to permit review of a remand order only by a court of appeals, not by the Supreme Court.

Respondent Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée is a Delaware corporation. Its principal place of business is in the Republic of Guinea, where it operates bauxite mines and processing facilities. Forty-nine percent of its stock is owned by the Republic of Guinea. The remaining fifty-one percent is owned by Halco (Mining) Inc., a Pennsylvania company that contracted to procure insurance for CBG. In 1973, Halco instructed broker Marsh & McLennan to obtain $20 million in business interruption coverage. The first $10 million was placed with Insurance Company of North America. The excess $10 million was placed through Bland Payne in the London market with 21 foreign insurers. Fourteen of those insurers are petitioners here. The placing slip was initialed effective February 12, 1974. The excess insurers adopted the INA policy terms. After CBG allegedly suffered mechanical problems causing more than $10 million in losses, it filed a two-count diversity action in the Western District of Pennsylvania in December 1975. CBG named INA on the first count and the excess insurers on the second count. The excess insurers answered by asserting lack of in personam jurisdiction. They later moved for summary judgment on that ground. CBG served its first document request in August 1976. The request sought copies of all business interruption policies issued between 1972 and 1975. After objections and motions to compel, the district court overruled the objections in June 1978. The court later narrowed the request to policies delivered in or covering risks in Pennsylvania. Petitioners stated the documents were held by London brokers. The court ordered them to request the files and gave successive extensions through November 1978. On December 21, 1978, after petitioners offered only to make four million files available in London, the district court warned that failure to produce the information within 60 days would result in an order under Rule 37(b)(2)(A) assuming jurisdiction. On April 19, 1979, the court found the material had not been produced and entered the sanction. It also made independent findings of jurisdiction under the Pennsylvania long-arm statute and by implicit consent through adoption of the INA contract. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the jurisdictional holding as to all but three excess insurers. It relied solely on the validity of the Rule 37 sanction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari because the decision conflicted with Familia de Boom v. Arosa Mercantil, S.A., 629 F.2d 1134 (CA5 1980).

In 1979 the Cleveland Board of Education hired James Loudermill as a security guard. On his job application Loudermill stated that he had never been convicted of a felony. Eleven months later a routine check revealed that Loudermill had been convicted of grand larceny in 1968. By letter dated November 3, 1980 the Board's Business Manager informed Loudermill that he had been dismissed for dishonesty in filling out the employment application. Loudermill received no opportunity to respond to the charge or to challenge the dismissal before it took effect. Under Ohio law Loudermill was a classified civil servant who could be discharged only for cause and who could file an administrative appeal within ten days of receiving notice of dismissal. Loudermill filed an appeal with the Cleveland Civil Service Commission on November 12, 1980. A referee held a hearing on January 29, 1981 and recommended reinstatement. On July 20, 1981 the full Commission heard argument and upheld the dismissal. Richard Donnelly was hired as a bus mechanic by the Parma Board of Education in 1979. Donnelly had been fired by the same Board in 1977 for failing an eye examination but had been reinstated after appeal. On his new application Donnelly listed his prior employment with the Board but did not disclose the earlier discharge. When the omission was discovered Donnelly was again fired for dishonesty. He received no opportunity to respond to the charge before termination. Donnelly appealed to the Civil Service Commission, which affirmed the dismissal. Loudermill and Donnelly filed separate suits in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio alleging that the dismissal procedures violated their rights to procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The District Court dismissed both complaints for failure to state a claim. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed in part and remanded. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.