MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER
W. KEITH WATKINS, Chief District Judge.
I. INTRODUCTION
Plaintiff, a formerly underage victim of Alabama's illicit sex trafficking industry, brought this lawsuit in Alabama state court pursuant to Alabama Code § 13A-6-157, which creates a civil cause of action for victims of sex trafficking. She named a long list of defendants. Three of them were added because of their affiliation with the hotels where Plaintiff was victimized (Choice Hotels International, Inc., Veda LLC, Nirav Joshi; collectively, "Hotel Defendants"). One was her former pimp (Santiago Alonso, i.e., "Alonso"). The rest were individuals and companies responsible for operating the website Backpage.com ("Backpage Defendants"), which was the site Alonso used to advertise Plaintiff's sexual services to potential clients. Backpage Defendants removed the case to federal court on the ground that Plaintiff had fraudulently misjoined Alonso and the Hotel Defendants, both of whom are citizens of Alabama ("Alabama Defendants"), in an effort to defeat federal jurisdiction. (Doc. # 1.) Plaintiff then filed a Motion to Remand to state court, arguing that the Alabama Defendants were properly joined. (Doc. # 33.) On June 26, 2017, the Magistrate Judge filed a Recommendation (Doc. # 44), to which Backpage timely objected (Doc. # 48). For the reasons set forth below, and upon an independent and de novo review of the record and consideration of the Recommendation, Backpage's objections are due to be overruled, the Recommendation is due to be adopted, and the motion to remand is due to be granted.
II. DISCUSSION
The Backpage Defendants make two arguments in their objections. First, they argue that the Magistrate Judge applied the wrong standard in determining whether the Alabama Defendants were fraudulently misjoined. And second, they argue that, even under the correct standard, the allegations in the complaint do not support the conclusion that Plaintiff's claims against Backpage are sufficiently connected to her claims against the Alabama Defendants, such that joinder is appropriate.
A. The Magistrate Judge applied the correct standard
The joining of a resident defendant to defeat diversity jurisdiction is fraudulent joinder: "(1) if there is no [reasonable] possibility the plaintiff can prove a cause of action against the resident defendant; or (2) if there has been outright fraud by the plaintiff in pleading jurisdictional facts." Tapscott v. MS Dealer Serv. Corp., 77 F.3d 1353, 1360 n.17 (11th Cir. 1996), abrogated on other grounds in Cohen v. Office Depot, Inc., 204 F.3d 1069 (11th Cir. 2000); see also Legg v. Wyeth, 428 F.3d 1317, 1324 n.5 (11th Cir. 2005) (clarifying that "no possibility" means "[t]he potential for legal liability must be reasonable, not merely theoretical" (citations omitted)). Tapscott also identified a third category of fraudulent joinder: Even where the plaintiff can prove a cause of action against him, the resident defendant is fraudulently "misjoined" if the claims against him "have no real connection with the controversy." Tapscott, 77 F.3d at 1360.
Focusing on a single sentence from the Recommendation, the Backpage Defendants argue that the Magistrate Judge applies the standard for fraudulent joinder (the first Tapscott category), rather than misjoinder (the third Tapscott category), when he writes: "There is nothing trivial or far-fetched in the claims against [the Alabama] defendants." (Doc. # 44, at 10.) But Backpage's myopic analysis ignores the rest of the opinion. Just before that sentence, the Magistrate Judge analyzes the extent to which the claims against the Backpage Defendants have "a real connection" with the claims against the Alabama Defendants, concluding that:
the alleged actions of the Backpage Defendants in engaging with Alonso, an Alabama resident defendant, to advertise the sexual services of a minor child, which services were carried out in a Dothan Alabama Quality Inn owned and operated by Veda and Joshi, and resulted in injury to K.R., arise from the same operative facts or series of occurrences.
(Doc. # 44, at 9.) The Magistrate Judge's analysis applies the correct standard—that is, whether the claims against the allegedly misjoined defendants "have no real connection with the controversy." For this reason, Backpage's first argument is without merit.
B. The Complaint supports the Magistrate Judge's conclusion
The Backpage Defendants next argue that Plaintiff fails to plead facts sufficient to establish that her claims against them have a "real connection" with her claims against the Alabama defendants. They argue that the Magistrate Judge relies on "conclusory allegations," rather than "specific factual allegations," to conclude otherwise. (Doc. # 48, at 6.)
Again, buying Backpage's argument would require the court to ignore entire paragraphs from the Recommendation. To quote the Magistrate Judge:
K.R. alleges the liability of Backpage and the other Defendants under Alabama's anti human-trafficking statute. Her allegations reference Backpage's creation of a multimillion-dollar advertising platform that caters to pimps and sex traffickers in order to benefit financially from illegal prostitution and sex trafficking, including the sexual exploitation, trafficking, and victimization of children, including K.R. She cites to the findings of the Senate Report entitled "Backpage.com's Knowing Facilitation of Online Sex Trafficking" that summarizes the role www.backpage.com and its founders and officers (James Larkin, Michael Lacey, and Carl Ferrer) have played in the criminal industry of sex trafficking. She describes Backpage's practices and procedures of altering its "adult" advertisements before publication by deleting words, phrases, and images indicative of criminality, including child sex trafficking, in order to conceal evidence of criminality, and which knowingly facilitated illegal prostitution and child sex trafficking.
She alleges the combined actions of all the named Defendants caused her injuries and that she would be prejudiced significantly if she could not present all of her claims in a single action. K.R. has alleged that all the Defendants conspired to cause her injuries and that her right to relief for her injuries arises out of the same series of occurrences which involve common questions of law and fact to all Defendants.
These allegations are more than enough to establish that the claims against the Backpage Defendants have a "real connection" with the claims against the Alabama Defendants. Thus, Backpage's second argument is also meritless.
III. CONCLUSION
Accordingly, it is ORDERED as follows:
1. Backpage's objections (Doc. # 48) are OVERRULED;
2. The Magistrate Judge's Recommendation (Doc. # 44) is ADOPTED;
3. Plaintiff's Motion to Remand (Doc. # 33) is GRANTED; and
4. This action is REMANDED to the Circuit Court of Houston County, Alabama.
The Clerk of the Court is DIRECTED to take all necessary steps to effectuate the remand.
CIVIL APPEALS JURISDICTION CHECKLIST
1. Appealable Orders: Courts of Appeals have jurisdiction conferred and strictly limited by statute:
(a) Appeals from final orders pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291: Final orders and judgments of district courts, or final orders of bankruptcy courts which have been appealed to and fully resolved by a district court under 28 U.S.C. § 158, generally are appealable. A final decision is one that "ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment." Pitney Bowes, Inc. v. Mestre, 701 F.2d 1365, 1368 (11th Cir. 1983) (citing Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233, 65 S.Ct. 631, 633, 89 S.Ct. 911 (1945)). A magistrate judge's report and recommendation is not final and appealable until judgment thereon is entered by a district court judge. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b); Perez-Priego v. Alachua County Clerk of Court, 148 F.3d 1272 (11th Cir. 1998). However, under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c)(3), the Courts of Appeals have jurisdiction over an appeal from a final judgment entered by a magistrate judge, but only if the parties consented to the magistrate's jurisdiction. McNab v. J & J Marine, Inc., 240 F.3d 1326, 1327-28 (11th Cir. 2001).
(b) In cases involving multiple parties or multiple claims, a judgment as to fewer than all parties or all claims is not a final, appealable decision unless the district court has certified the judgment for immediate review under Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b). Williams v. Bishop, 732 F.2d 885, 885-86 (11th Cir. 1984). A judgment which resolves all issues except matters, such as attorneys' fees and costs, that are collateral to the merits, is immediately appealable. Budinich v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 486 U.S. 196, 201, 108 S.Ct. 1717, 1721-22, 100 L.Ed.2d 178 (1988); LaChance v. Duffy's Draft House, Inc., 146 F.3d 832, 837 (11th Cir. 1998).
(c) Appeals pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a): Under this section, appeals are permitted from the following types of orders:
i. Orders granting, continuing, modifying, refusing or dissolving injunctions, or refusing to dissolve or modify injunctions; However, interlocutory appeals from orders denying temporary restraining orders are not permitted. McDougald v. Jenson, 786 F.2d 1465, 1472-73 (11th Cir. 1986);
ii. Orders appointing receivers or refusing to wind up receiverships; and
iii. Orders determining the rights and liabilities of parties in admiralty cases.
(d) Appeals pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) and Fed.R.App.P. 5: The certification specified in 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) must be obtained before a petition for permission to appeal is filed in the Court of Appeals. The district court's denial of a motion for certification is not itself appealable.
(e) Appeals pursuant to judicially created exceptions to the finality rule: Limited exceptions are discussed in cases including, but not limited to: Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 1225-26, 93 S.Ct. 1528 (1949); Atlantic Fed. Sav. & Loan Ass'n v. Blythe Eastman Paine Webber, Inc., 890 F.2d 371, 376 (11th Cir. 1989); Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp., 379 U.S. 148, 157, 85 S.Ct. 308, 312, 13 L.Ed.2d 199 (1964).
2. Time for Filing: The timely filing of a notice of appeal is mandatory and jurisdictional. Rinaldo v. Corbett, 256 F.3d 1276, 1278 (11th Cir. 2001). In civil cases, Fed.R.App.P. 4(a) and (c) set the following time limits:
(a) Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(1): A notice of appeal in compliance with the requirements set forth in Fed.R.App.P. 3 must be filed in the district court within 30 days after the order or judgment appealed from is entered. However, if the United States or an officer or agency thereof is a party, the notice of appeal must be filed in the district court within 60 days after such entry. THE NOTICE MUST BE RECEIVED AND FILED IN THE DISTRICT COURT NO LATER THAN THE LAST DAY OF THE APPEAL PERIOD — no additional days are provided for mailing. Special filing provisions for inmates are discussed below.
(b) Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(3): "If one party timely files a notice of appeal, any other party may file a notice of appeal within 14 days after the date when the first notice was filed, or within the time otherwise prescribed by this Rule 4(a), whichever period ends later."
(c) Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(4): If any party makes a timely motion in the district court under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure of a type specified in this rule, the time for appeal for all parties runs from the date of entry of the order disposing of the last such timely filed motion.
(d) Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(5) and 4(a)(6): Under certain limited circumstances, the district court may extend or reopen the time to file a notice of appeal. Under Rule 4(a)(5), the time may be extended if a motion for an extension is filed within 30 days after expiration of the time otherwise provided to file a notice of appeal, upon a showing of excusable neglect or good cause. Under Rule 4(a)(6), the time to file an appeal may be reopened if the district court finds, upon motion, that the following conditions are satisfied: the moving party did not receive notice of the entry of the judgment or order within 21 days after entry; the motion is filed within 180 days after the judgment or order is entered or within 14 days after the moving party receives notice, whichever is earlier; and no party would be prejudiced by the reopening.
(e) Fed.R.App.P. 4(c): If an inmate confined to an institution files a notice of appeal in either a civil case or a criminal case, the notice of appeal is timely if it is deposited in the institution's internal mail system on or before the last day for filing. Timely filing may be shown by a declaration in compliance with 28 U.S.C. § 1746 or a notarized statement, either of which must set forth the date of deposit and state that first-class postage has been prepaid.
3. Format of the notice of appeal: Form 1, Appendix of Forms to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, is a suitable format. See also Fed.R.App.P. 3(c). A pro se notice of appeal must be signed by the appellant.
4. Effect of a notice of appeal: A district court lacks jurisdiction, i.e., authority, to act after the filing of a timely notice of appeal, except for actions in aid of appellate jurisdiction or to rule on a timely motion of the type specified in Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(4).
