The full case caption appears at the end of this opinion.
Posner, Circuit Judge. This appeal brings beforeus a recurring problem in the administration ofthe diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts.A plaintiff brings a suit in a state court. Thedefendant removes it to federal court. To keepthe case from being remanded to the state court,the defendant must show not only that the partiesare of diverse citizenship, ordinarily astraightforward thing to show, but also that theamount in controversy exceeds the jurisdictionalminimum, which is now $75,000 though it was only$50,000 when the suit was brought. 28 U.S.C. sec.1332. Since the plaintiff will not have had toallege an amount in controversy when he filed hissuit in state court (or, if there is a minimumamount in controversy for suing in that court,invariably it will be substantially lower thanthe federal minimum), and since his stakes in thelitigation are likely to be better known to himthan to the defendant, there is a risk that theplaintiff will not contest jurisdiction uponremoval, but later, should the case turn againsthim on the merits, will claim that the federalminimum amount in controversy has not in factbeen met. In Shaw v. Dow Brands, Inc., 994 F.2d364 (7th Cir. 1993), on which the defendantsheavily rely, we suggested that this kind ofsandbagging tactic could be defeated by deemingthe plaintiff’s failure to contest removal on theground that the stakes were not great enough tosatisfy the jurisdictional minimum a forfeitureof any subsequent challenge to jurisdiction. Theplaintiffs in this case ask us to reexamine Shawin light of the bedrock, the unquestioned,principle, enforced by us after Shaw in a casethat like the present one involved the removal ofan Alabama antitrust suit to federal districtcourt, In re Brand Name Prescription DrugsAntitrust Litigation, 123 F.3d 599, 607-10 (7thCir. 1997) (we’ll cite this as “Huggins,” thatbeing the name of the lead plaintiff in thatAlabama suit), that objections to subject-matterjurisdiction cannot be waived, and are notforfeited, until a case has gone through to finaljudgment after exhaustion of all appellateremedies.
