§ 1331: "The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States."
In 1938, Justice Owen Roberts set forth the "legal-certainty test",[2] which is still used today: It must appear to a legal certainty that the claim is really for less than the jurisdictional amount to justify dismissal.
[3]The validity of the amount of damages claimed is considered a threshold issue of law for a judge to decide at the commencement of the case.
Several U.S. states prohibit plaintiffs in such cases from demanding a specific amount of money in the ad damnum section of their complaints, because of serious problems with unscrupulous attorneys gaining undue publicity by simply demanding outrageous damages numbers that they cannot possibly prove at trial.
[7] A few states like California have decided that it is more efficient to unify all trial courts so that judges and support staff can be more easily reassigned where needed.
However, in California, nearly all lawsuits involving an amount in controversy up to $25,000 are classified as "limited civil cases,"[8] which are subject to special simplified procedural rules intended to hold down litigation costs.