We were in western Tennessee last week for an argument. We stayed at a beautiful and venerable hotel, most famous for twice-daily “march of the ducks.” Every morning, at 11 a.m. sharp (at least 30 minutes after guests have packed the lobby), an elevator door opens, and a uniformed “duck master” leads a perfect procession
California courts continue to find ways to exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants, even when there is little or no dispute that the Constitution and the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court do not permit it. “Resistance” is probably too strong a word, insofar as it calls up images
Today’s post looks at a case where a defendant was in the wrong place. You might say the same thing about us. As you read this, we are on summer holiday. Because our vacation almost always takes place, as it does this year, during the Drug and Device Son’s birthday, he has veto power over
By now, the reinvigorated limits on personal jurisdiction, courtesy of the SCOTUS decisions in Bauman and BMS, are old hat. No longer can defendants be dragged into plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions unless they are either at home in such jurisdictions or actually did something relating to a colorable claim there. So goodbye to litigation tourists suing
Allow us to wax nostalgic for a moment. Decades ago, an improbable series of events led us to Nashville, where we lived for several years, blissfully holding adulthood (and college) at bay and basking in all that the resident music industry provided. Last week, we had a perfectly joyous reunion with the dearest of friends
You cannot get too much of a good thing, so let’s celebrate another good jurisdiction case out of Missouri. (Prior examples can be found here and here, among others.) In Timpone v. Ethicon, 2019 WL 2525780 (E.D. Mo. June 19, 2019), the plaintiff lawyers cobbled together 99 plaintiffs (a pure CAFA evasion) to
Today’s guest post is by Tucker Ellis‘ Dick Dean, a longtime friend of the blog and outspoken advocate of using the Dormant Commerce Clause as a one-two punch in certain personal jurisdiction situations. This is his latest update on Dormant Commerce Clause developments. As always, our guest posters are 100% responsible for their
First, we apologize to our readers for not publishing this post earlier. It contains new information that we’ve known about for a couple of weeks, but we felt we had to keep it under wraps temporarily until Bexis filed an amicus curiae brief (last Friday) in one of the cases we discuss. Just as we
Missouri courts keep showing us surprisingly good things on the personal jurisdiction front. In Mitchell v. DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc., 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 92621 (W.D. Missouri June 3, 2019), the plaintiff twice had a knee replacement implant while she lived in Kansas, then sued in Missouri, claiming that, after she moved there, that is
Personal jurisdiction being a key issue for us here at DDL Blog, we’ve talked a lot about the “minimum contacts” needed to establish jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant. Not many cases, however, analyze the two specific jurisdictional tests for minimum contacts. That’s likely because in most cases, it doesn’t make a difference whether you use