Strabala v. Zhang, 318 F.R.D. 81 (Ill. N.D. 2016), featured here for its detailed discussion of e-mail evidence, provides an equally thorough analysis of the differences between residence and domicile in the Federal court jurisdiction calculus.
In the Federal litigation scheme, the party asserting Federal court jurisdiction bears the burden of proving subject matter jurisdiction by a preponderance of the evidence.
The plaintiff here alleged that the Northern District had original jurisdiction based on 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(2) – the diversity of citizenship statute that vests Federal courts with jurisdiction over claims between “citizens of a State and citizens or subjects of a foreign state.”
The defendants were unquestionably Chinese citizens – a foreign state under Section 1332. The plaintiff’s citizenship, though, was unclear. While plaintiff claimed he was a citizen of Illinois, the defendants disputed this; they pointed to the plaintiff’s home in China as proof that he wasn’t really an Illinois citizen and so was stateless. A “stateless” citizen can’t invoke Federal court diversity jurisdiction.
Though colloquially used interchangeably, under Federal law, the terms citizenship and residence have important differences. Citizenship equals domicile, not residence. The term residence denotes where a person lives while domicile carries both a physical and mental dimension.
Domicile is “the place where that individual has a true, fixed home and principal establishment” and the place where the person intends to eventually return. A person can have multiple residences but only one domicile.
Objective factors a court considers to determine domicile include “current residence, voting registration and voting practices, location of personal and real property, location of financial accounts, membership in unions and other associations, place of employment, driver’s license and automobile registration, and tax payments.” But no lone citizenship/domicile factor is conclusive; each case turns on its own facts.
Applying these factors, the Court noted that since plaintiff was based in Illinois from the late 1980s through 2006 (when plaintiff moved first to Houston, TX then to Shanghai), the Court required defendants to show that plaintiff not only currently lived outside of Illinois but also had no intention of returning to Illinois.
The Court credited the plaintiff’s declaration (sworn statement) of intent to keep an Illinois domicile. Other factors weighing in favor of finding subject matter jurisdiction included (1) plaintiff and his wife never sold there Chicago condominium or removed furniture from it when they moved to Houston in 2006, (2) for several months they lived in corporate housing provided by plaintiff’s Houston employer (an architecture firm), (3) plaintiff’s wife divided her time equally between Chicago and Houston while plaintiff spent about 50% of his time in Shanghai, 40% in Houston and 10% in Chicago.
The plaintiff’s Texas drivers’ license and Houston condo purchase weren’t enough to tilt the citizenship question to the defendants (who, again, argued that the plaintiff wasn’t an Illinois citizen) since the plaintiff swore under oath that he intended to keep an Illinois domicile and defendant had no facts to refute this.
Rejecting the defendants’ argument that plaintiff’s domicile was Shanghai, the Court focused on the following facts: (1) plaintiff lived in a furnished hotel with a lease of one year or less and owned no real property or car in Shanghai, (2) plaintiff’s Chinese work permit had to be renewed annually; and (3) plaintiff’s wife spent six months out of the year in Chicago.
Other pro-Illinois domicile factors cited by the Court included the plaintiff’s testimony (via declaration) that he has had a landline telephone number with a Chicago area code for over two decades and plaintiff’s LinkedIn profile that listed his employment locations as Shanghai, Seoul, and Chicago.
Afterwords:
For Federal subject matter jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship to attach, the plaintiff must be a citizen of a State (as opposed to a foreign country). This case provides an exhaustive application of the various factors a court considers when deciding the site of a Federal plaintiff’s domicile in a complex fact pattern and emphasizes the differences between residence and domicile.