Margaret M. Krier-Hawthorne v. Thomas L. Beam and L. Wallace Sink, Administrator of the Estate of Joseph Krier, Deceased

For the eighth time in fifteen years the Court is called upon to decide whether the citizenship, as an individual, of a personal representative of a decedent’s estate should be dispositive as to whether parties are diverse.1 The present case involves a personal representative identified and appointed only after the decedent’s death to facilitate pursuit of a claim by a plaintiff, the decedent having left no estate.2 The claim is under an insurance policy of which the decedent was the insured.

All of our previous cases, save one,3 have held that the personal representative’s citizenship should…