Eric Malone v. Toyota Motor Sales

NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT ___________

No. 24-2831 __________

ERIC RAY MALONE,

Appellant v.

TOYOTA MOTOR SALES, INC. ____________________________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania (D.C. Civil Action No. 1:23-cv-00242) District Judge: Honorable Susan Paradise Baxter ____________________________________

Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit LAR 34.1(a) April 1, 2025

Before: RESTREPO, MATEY, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges (Opinion filed: April 8, 2025) ___________

OPINION* ___________

PER CURIAM

Appellant Eric Malone appeals the District Court’s September 19, 2024, order dismissing his complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction because Malone did not establish diversity of citizenship between the parties. We will affirm the judgment.

I.

Malone filed his complaint in the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in August 2023, seeking to confirm an arbitration award issued in his favor by the California Dispute Settlement Program.1 For subject-matter jurisdiction, Malone relied solely on diversity of citizenship. Appellee filed a motion to dismiss arguing that the District Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the case because there is no diversity of citizenship between the parties as Appellee is a California corporation and Malone is a citizen of California. Malone filed an opposition brief and an affidavit arguing he was a citizen of Pennsylvania. The District Court held an evidentiary hearing in July 2024 “[t]o clarify [Malone’s] domicile” for purposes of diversity jurisdiction. After the hearing, the District Court determined that Malone had failed to prove he was a Pennsylvania citizen at the time of filing his complaint. The District Court thus dismissed the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Alternatively, the District Court dismissed the complaint as being precluded by the Superior Court of California’s order vacating the arbitration award. Malone appealed.2

II.

By failing to address diversity jurisdiction in his opening brief, Malone has likely forfeited appellate review of the District Court’s determination. See Ctr. for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Env’t Prot. Agency, 937 F.3d 533, 542 (5th Cir. 2019) (noting that “arguments in favor of jurisdiction[] can be forfeited”); see also Blakely v. Schlumberger Tech. Corp., 648 F.3d 921, 931-32 (8th Cir. 2011) (ruling that because appellant “ha[d] not actually challenged the district court’s conclusion that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction . . . she ha[d] waived any argument to this effect on appeal”); Lara v. Comm’r Pa. State Police 125 F.4th 428, 432 n.5 (3d Cir. 2025) (reiterating that “an issue is [forfeited] unless a party raises it in its opening brief” (quotation marks omitted)).

In any event, the District Court did not clearly err in finding that Malone was a citizen of California at the time he filed his complaint. See Johnson, 724 F.3d at 345. We have explained that “[c]itizenship is synonymous with domicile, and the domicile of an individual is his true, fixed and permanent home and place of habitation.” McCann v. Newman Irrevocable Trust, 458 F.3d 281, 286 (3d Cir. 2006) (cleaned up). The District Court determined that Malone was domiciled in California because it was “apparent from the record that [Malone] ha[d] been litigating this case from California,” and because Malone testified at the evidentiary hearing that “he ha[d] not resided in Pennsylvania since June 2012” and stated in a letter that he had been “a resident of California for the past ten years.”

In his reply brief, Malone asserts that “his place of employment is in State College, Pennsylvania” and that “his residence is in either Oil City, Pennsylvania, or Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania,” but he offered no documentary evidence of the same. Before the District Court, the only evidence he submitted supporting a residence in Pennsylvania was a voter registration card post-dating the filing of the complaint. A review of Malone’s testimony from the evidentiary hearing, along with the fact that he continues to litigate his appeal from a California address, supports the District Court’s finding that Malone’s domicile at the time of filing was in California. Thus, the parties were not diverse as required for the District Court to exercise subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1).

III.

For the foregoing reasons, we will affirm the District Court’s judgment.3

Court before submitting any further filings in this matter. Finally, to the extent Malone seeks any other relief through his additional motions, it is denied.