We are trying hard not to fall into the current fashion of catastrophizing everything.  But the SCOTUS opinion in Mallory might have been the worst recent High Court ruling for corporate defendants.  This blog has spilled a lot of tears and ink on Mallory (including here, here, and here, and several other…

It’s been a little less than a year since the Supreme Court’s rolling out the red carpet to forum-shopping plaintiffs in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 600 U.S. 122 (2023).  Mallory was, in places 5-4, and elsewhere 4-1-4, and everywhere extremely fact specific – to the point of including a defendant-specific image of its Pennsylvania contacts that, as far as we can tell, wasn’t even in the record, but rather was found on the Internet.  600 U.S. at 142-43.  The result – beyond the Dormant Commerce Clause flag waving in Justice Alito’s concurrence (discussed here) – was to punch this plaintiff’s one-time ticket against the Norfolk Southern Railway.  “To decide this case, we need not speculate whether any other statutory scheme and set of facts would suffice to establish consent to suit.”  Id. at 136.Continue Reading Mallory in the States – A Year After the Deluge