Otis Gamble, III v. Allstate Insurance Co.

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-12861
Non-Argument Calendar
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OTIS GAMBLE, III,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
ALLSTATE INSURANCE CO,
Defendant-Appellee.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Alabama
D.C. Docket No. 2:19-cv-00684-WKW-CWB
____________________
USCA11 Case: 22-12861 Document: 10-1 Date Filed: 01/20/2023 Page: 1 of 3

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-12861
Before R OSENBAUM , JILL PRYOR , and G RANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Otis Gamble, III, sued Allstate Insurance Co. over his right
to payment from certain life insurance policies. But he did not
establish any basis for a federal court to hear his lawsuit. We
therefore affirm the district court’s dismissal of his case.
Gamble began this pro se lawsuit in 2019, alleging that he
was entitled to funds from life insurance policies issued by Allstate
and that he unsuccessfully tried to litigate this claim in state court.
A magistrate judge granted Gamble’s motion to proceed in forma
pauperis and conducted a pretrial screening of the complaint under
28 U.S.C. § 1915(e). The magistrate judge determined that
Gamble’s complaint did not explain the federal court’s basis for
jurisdiction or allege facts that, if true, would justify relief from a
federal court. So she ordered Gamble to file an amended
complaint. He did so, but the magistrate judge determined that the
amended complaint suffered from “many—if not all—of the same
fatal flaws” of the first complaint, and that it failed “to allege
sufficient facts to invoke either federal question jurisdiction . . . or
diversity jurisdiction.” The district court agreed and ordered the
complaint dismissed without prejudice. Gamble appealed to this
Court, and we now review the district court’s judgment of
dismissal.
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22-12861 Opinion of the Court 3
“Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. They
possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.”
Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377
(1994). That means that Gamble had to show why his case fell
within the district court’s jurisdiction before the court could rule
on the merits of his complaint. In his amended complaint, Gamble
copied portions of the federal question and diversity jurisdiction
statutes. But he did not allege any facts that, if true, would suggest
either (1) that his case involved the Constitution or laws of the
United States federal government, or (2) that he was a citizen of a
different state than Allstate and that the amount in controversy
between them was greater than $75,000. And on appeal, Gamble
does not explain why the district court actually had jurisdiction
over his case. Because the district court had no reason to think that
it had power to hear this lawsuit, it had no choice but to dismiss
Gamble’s amended complaint.
We AFFIRM.
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