Rowland v. Patterson

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge:

Maryland law requires medical malpractice claimants to exhaust an arbitration remedy provided by the state as a precondition to bringing any civil action on the claim in state or federal court. The question on this appeal is whether when a rejected arbitration claim is followed by a federal action invoking diversity jurisdiction, diversity is determined by the parties’ citizenship at the time the state arbitration claim was filed or at the time the federal diversity action was later commenced. We hold that citizenship at the time the federal action was commenced by…