Case Explained: FS MEDICAL SUPPLIES, LLC Plaintiff – v. TANNER PHARMA UK LIMITED; RAYMOND FAIRBANKS BOURNE

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Filed: 2026-06-25 The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of FS Medical Supplies, LLC’s breach of contract claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(3) diversity jurisdiction was not satisfied because the plaintiff, an LLC with members from Texas, California, and China, could not be treated as a “citizen of different States” when its foreign citizenship was considered. Applying the complete diversity rule established in *General Technology Applications, Inc. v. Exro Ltda* and *Grupo Dataflux v. Atlas Global Group*, L.P.*, the court determined that an LLC’s citizenship includes all its members; therefore, FS Medical’s Chinese membership destroyed the requisite diversity between “citizens of different States” on opposite sides of the caption. Consequently, the appeal was dismissed without prejudice to a potential savings statute claim, as the court ruled it lacked jurisdiction to grant relief under North Carolina Rule 41(b) once subject matter jurisdiction was found to be absent. Do It For The Case Law is a news reporting service. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.