66
Opinion of the Court
fendant in the lawsuit, Lewis urged, defeated diversity of citizenship. Id., at 36. Without addressing this argument, the District Court denied Lewis' motion to remand on September 24, 1990, treating as dispositive Lewis' admission that he had settled his own claims against Whayne Supply. Id., at 55.
Discovery, begun in state court, continued in the now federal lawsuit, and the parties filed pretrial conference papers beginning in July 1991. In June 1993, plaintiff Liberty Mutual and defendant Whayne Supply entered into a settlement of Liberty Mutual's subrogation claim, and the District Court dismissed Whayne Supply from the lawsuit. With Caterpillar as the sole defendant adverse to Lewis,1 the case pro-1 In accord with 28 U. S. C. § 1367 and Rule 14 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Caterpillar, after removing the case to federal court, impleaded Lewis' employer, Gene Wilson Enterprises, a Kentucky corporation, as a third-party defendant. See App. 2. Gene Wilson Enterprises, so far as the record shows, remained a named third-party defendant, adverse solely to third-party plaintiff Caterpillar, through judgment. See Brief for Respondent 5. No dispute ran between Lewis and his employer, and Caterpillar's third-party complaint against Gene Wilson Enterprises had no bearing on the authority of the federal court to adjudicate the diversity claims Lewis asserted against Caterpillar. See, e. g., Wichita Railroad & Light Co. v. Public Util. Comm'n of Kan., 260 U. S. 48, 54 (1922) (federal jurisdiction once acquired on the ground of complete diversity of citizenship is unaffected by the subsequent intervention "of a party whose presence is not essential to a decision of the controversy between the original parties"). As elaborated in 3 J. Moore, Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 14.26, p. 14-116 (2d ed. 1996) (footnotes omitted): "Once federal subject matter jurisdiction is established over the underlying case between [plaintiff] and [defendant], the jurisdictional propriety of each additional claim is to be assessed individually. Thus, assuming that jurisdiction is based upon diversity of citizenship between [plaintiff] and [defendant], the question concerning impleader is whether there is a jurisdictional basis for the claim by [defendant] against [third-party defendant]. The fact that [plaintiff] and [third-party defendant] may be co-citizens is completely irrelevant. Unless [plaintiff] chooses to amend his complaint to assert a claim against [third-party defendant], [plaintiff] and [third-party defend-
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