Background
Michelle Jacquet sued Nissan in Los Angeles Superior Court over an Infiniti lease, alleging Song-Beverly Consumer Warranty Act claims and seeking actual damages, civil penalties, fees, and costs. Nissan removed after later disclosures clarified federal diversity jurisdiction. Jacquet argued the removal was too late because the complaint and information already known to Nissan should have started the 30-day clock.
The Court’s Holding
The Central District denied remand. The complaint stated the vehicle’s gross capitalized cost but not what Jacquet had actually paid under the lease, the relevant starting point for a lessee’s restitution claim. It also did not allege her citizenship. Because removability was not clear from the four corners of the complaint, pre-suit records and Nissan’s subjective knowledge did not trigger the first 30-day deadline. Nissan could remove after its own investigation or later paper clarified the facts, subject to the one-year diversity limit. Its notice plausibly alleged diverse citizenship and more than $75,000 in controversy, and a factual challenge first raised in reply was waived.
Key Takeaways
- The federal removal clock begins only when the operative paper clearly and unequivocally reveals removability.
- For a leased vehicle, gross capitalized cost does not necessarily establish Song-Beverly actual damages.
- A defendant’s pre-suit knowledge cannot be combined with an indeterminate complaint to create a hybrid removal deadline.
- A plaintiff should make any factual attack on jurisdiction in the opening remand motion, not for the first time in reply.
Why It Matters
This ruling gives California lemon-law counsel a roadmap for removal disputes. Pleading choices about lease payments, offsets, citizenship, civil penalties, and fees may determine when the removal clock begins, while defendants need not investigate beyond the complaint merely to preserve the first 30-day deadline.
Removal timing is document driven. Under Ninth Circuit authority, the defendant does not have to investigate beyond an indeterminate pleading merely to start the first 30-day clock. A later amended pleading, motion, order, discovery response, or other paper can trigger a second period when it first makes federal jurisdiction clear; independently discovered grounds may also support removal if neither statutory clock has expired and the diversity case remains within the one-year limit.
Song-Beverly cases make the amount calculation especially fact sensitive. For leases, actual payments and statutory offsets may matter more than sticker price or gross capitalized cost. Civil penalties and attorney fees may count when properly placed in controversy, but the removing party still needs plausible allegations and, after a factual challenge, competent proof. Plaintiffs seeking remand should decide in the opening brief whether the challenge is facial or factual and submit evidence accordingly.
The ruling does not decide the underlying warranty claims or predict whether Nissan will ultimately prove willfulness, damages, or entitlement to an offset. It decides only the forum. Still, careful pre-suit and pleading choices can influence forum strategy, so both sides should preserve lease records, repair history, payment information, citizenship evidence, and correspondence that may later define removability.
The order should be read in its procedural setting. Trial-court rulings directly govern the parties but do not bind other judges in the way a published appellate opinion does; a certified California appellate decision has broader precedential force. In either setting, counsel should verify later history, preserve the supporting record, and avoid treating a fact-specific remedy as an automatic rule. The most useful comparison for future motion practice is usually between the operative motion, the evidence the court accepted, and the exact relief stated in the disposition, including every deadline and condition imposed on the parties.
Read the full opinion (PDF) · Court docket