It’s now been about two-and-a-half years since the Supreme Court sided with 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. 600 U.S. at
Sooner or later we knew it would happen. The law on general jurisdiction by consent has been developing very favorably – maybe even too favorably. Since Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. 117 (2014), almost every appellate decision (including every state court of last resort and federal circuit court) has rejected general jurisdiction
Bexis recently filed a personal jurisdiction amicus brief in Pennsylvania – ground zero in the battle over general jurisdiction by “consent” due to a foreign corporation’s registration to do business in the state (technically, commonwealth). As is readily apparent from our 50-state survey on general jurisdiction by consent, most states reject such an expansive reading
Not quite a year ago, we prepared a 50-state survey on the status of claims that a foreign corporation’s compliance with a state’s corporate domestication statutes can be “consent” to general personal jurisdiction. This post went along with one of the DDL Blog’s cheat sheets called the “Post-BMS Personal Jurisdiction Cheat Sheet.”
Because
We’ve already unloaded on Hammons v. Ethicon, Inc., ___ A.3d ___, 2018 WL 3030754 (Pa. Super. June 19, 2018), where the court made a virtually unprecedented holding that a defendant challenging personal jurisdiction on Due Process grounds had the burden of proof in the course of allowing a litigation tourist from Indiana to stay
In the wake of the defense wins during the last Supreme Court term in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S.Ct. 1773 (2017) (“BMS”), and BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrell, 137 S.Ct. 1549 (2017), we’re retiring the personal jurisdiction cheat sheet we had been maintaining for the last three-plus years