Raymond Loubier Irrevocable Trust v. Loubier

The Second Circuit held that it need not decide whether the presence of the same person, in two different capacities, on both sides of a case caption, defeats diversity because the challenged judgment here rests on a misapprehension as to the particular irrevocable trusts named as plaintiffs. In this case, the four party trusts have no distinct juridical identity allowing them to sue or be sued in their own names; each was a traditional trust, establishing a mere fiduciary relationship and, as such, incapable of suing or being sued in its own name; because the party trusts can only sue or be sued in the names of their trustees, pleadings in the names of the trusts themselves do not require that these parties' citizenship, for purposes of diversity, be determined by reference to all their members; rather, these traditional trusts' citizenship was that of their respective trustees; because trustee Roland Loubier's Canadian citizenship is only suggested, not demonstrated, in the record, further inquiry was required on remand conclusively to determine diversity. Accordingly, the court vacated and remanded. View "Raymond Loubier Irrevocable Trust v. Loubier" on Justia Law