Hello, I’m Zhan Qingyun.

Over the last two episodes we finally returned from thought experiments and philosophical stories to actual legal practice: lawyers using tactics that may appear less than noble to secure advantages for clients.

When Sullivan sued The New York Times, for example, he added four Black Alabama ministers to destroy complete diversity and keep the litigation in Alabama state court.

That may sound too easy. Whenever I dispute with someone from another state and prefer my own state court, could I simply add any local resident with a tenuous connection? Courts are not quite so foolish.

They examine who the genuine parties are and who was added merely to create or defeat diversity. A plaintiff who prefers federal court may conversely try to manufacture diversity.

Determining whether a defendant is genuinely targeted or only a forum-selection device is highly fact-specific and ultimately subjective for each court.

Law looks like a system of rules, but rules alone do not answer concrete cases. Judges apply both doctrine and facts.

The Times did seek dismissal of the ministers, who barely related to the case and did not even know their names appeared in the ad—a fact conceded by the newspaper and the advertiser, John Murray. The attempt failed. The case’s genuinely disputed jurisdictional issue was instead personal jurisdiction.

A listener asked: if disputes between citizens of different states may enter federal court, how do we determine a person’s state citizenship? It is an excellent question, argued in court every day.

One might simply ask where the person lives, but modern lives involve migration, study, and temporary residence, making the inquiry intensely factual.

Generally courts examine the person’s home, actual and habitual residence, and intent to remain indefinitely. Historically, a wife’s domicile automatically followed her husband’s; modern courts treat spouses independently. Consider a married student who lives for years elsewhere while studying.

A court may hold that although she spends much of her time in another city—Los Angeles in one case—she never intended to remain and retained her prior domicile. There is ample room to dispute residence.

Suppose someone leaves a New York job for one in California and causes an accident while driving through Texas. Is the person still domiciled in New York, or already in California? Both sides can argue.