OpenAI Urges 11th Circuit to Affirm District Court’s Denial of Attorneys’ Fees

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should affirm the district court’s judgment that appellant Mark Walters isn’t entitled to $11,120 in attorneys’ fees and court costs when it remanded his defamation case against OpenAI to state court (see 2312110008), said OpenAI’s appellee brief Wednesday (docket 23-13843). Walters, a nationally syndicated talk show host, alleges OpenAI’s ChatGPT service defamed him to a reporter (see 2307240031). He suggests that the 11th Circuit has a ministerial duty to vacate and remand the order with instructions to the district court to explain its reasons for denying the fee request. But Walters’ “novel theory” finds no support in 11th Circuit law, said OpenAI’s brief. The 11th Circuit should affirm the judgment “if the record supports an inference that the defendant had an objectively reasonable basis for seeking removal,” it said: “Such is the case here.” The record confirms that OpenAI “had an objectively reasonable basis for removal where neither it nor its LLC members are citizens of Georgia, and thus complete diversity exists,” it said. OpenAI’s decision to accept remand rather than compromise the privacy of its individual LLC members by identifying each by name doesn’t “undermine that conclusion,” it said. The same district court “had previously retained diversity jurisdiction in a recent case without requiring individual identification of each LLC member to demonstrate that diversity jurisdiction existed,” it said. On this record, the district court didn’t abuse its discretion in denying the fee request “because OpenAI had an objectively reasonable basis for removal,” it said. Nor was it an abuse of discretion to decline Walters’ invitation “to make a contrary (and unsupported) inference,” it said. The 11th Circuit can and should find that the district court didn’t abuse its discretion, and the judgment should be affirmed, it said.