Estate of Samuel I. Roig, By and Through Its Personal Representative Gail Olivera, et al. v. United Parcel Service, Inc., et al.

This is a case in which the Defendants removed the matter to federal district court claiming there was diversity jurisdiction even though there were 4 Floridacitizen Plaintiffs and 2 Florida-citizen Defendants. The district court entered final judgment in favor of all 3 Defendants against all 4 Plaintiffs on a motion for entry of consent final judgment filed by the Plaintiffs because of the obvious lack of subject matter jurisdiction. A Panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear the matter on the merits and dismissed the appeal claiming it did not have jurisdiction to determine whether the district court had subject-matter jurisdiction or not, even though there were multiple parties on both sides of the “v.” who had Florida-state citizenship. Whether a Panel of the Circuit Court erred when it dismissed an appeal holding that there is no appellate jurisdiction to consider on the merits whether the trial court had subject-matter jurisdiction (“smj”) to issue a final judgment involving 4 Florida-citizen Plaintiffs and 2 Florida-citizen Plaintiffs, based on its belief that Plaintiffs conferred smj on the district court, or waived the ability to contest whether the district court had smj by consenting to the entry of a final judgment in favor of Defendants. The Panel decision is directly contrary to: Clark v. Housing Auth. of Alma, 971 F.2d 723, 726 (11th Cir. 1992) (holding that an exception to the general rule that one who consents to the entry of a final judgment