Gaming attorney Jeff Ifrah and his law firm have removed the Nevada state civil case against them filed by Chad Elie to the US District Court for the District of Nevada. “Removal” refers to the transfer of a case from a state court to a federal court that includes the place where the state action was pending, so the venue in Nevada makes sense. Only defendants may remove cases to federal court. To remove, the case must be eligible to have been filed in federal court in the first place. In this case, the federal court’s diversity jurisdiction appears to be met because Elie and Ifrah are citizens of different states and the matter in controversy exceeds $75,000.
Presumably Ifrah wants to get this in front of the federal bench because he’s more confident of his hearing there than in state court. And perhaps there will be a further move to transfer this case east of Nevada, to another federal court. Time will tell.
The case is number 2:13-cv-00888-JCM-VCF.
