Alaska Employment Law

LLCs and complete diversity:  U. S. District Judge John Sedwick has denied a motion to remand, after holding that a member of the defendant LLC wasn’t an Alaskan citizen, despite the person’s concession that he visits the state frequently, owns a vacation home here, has an Alaska mailing address, and has had Alaskan commercial fishing licenses and a vehicle in the State.  Sedwick credited the member’s unequivocal declaration that he’s a Norwegian national domiciled in Panama.   The (undisputed) principle of law underlying the remand motion is that “an LLC is a citizen in every state in which one of its members is a citizen.”  Aleut Enterprise, LLC v.  Adak Seafood, LLC, 2010 WL 431508 (D.Alaska Feb. 8, 2010)

Transfer of discovered documents:  After the court (Judge Sedwick) ordered production of certain software, the defendants transferred their only copy to a third party, and then represented that the third party had failed to provide it a copy “despite [defendants’] serious efforts.”  Sedwick accepted the defendants’ representations “at this juncture,” but noted that defendants might have to pay plaintiff’s costs of enforcing a Rule 45 subpoena against the third party and face “an appropriate rebuttable presumption” on the underlying claim on a theory of spoliation.  Sedwick said: “With the above in mind, Defendants might be wise to redouble their efforts to obtain the cooperation of [the third party].”  E-Terra, LLC v. SARS Corporation, 2010 WL 431965 (D.Alaska Feb. 3, 2010)