We have never been sued in Hawaii. At least not yet. It could be that someday someone will call us to task for eating too much shave ice or using the word “mahalo” incorrectly. But so far we have traversed the Aloha State unscathed by legal exposure. Our favorite Hawaiian island is Kauai, the Garden
Once again this week we turn to the aridities of personal jurisdiction. Or is that perhaps a bit … harsh? After all, last week personal jurisdiction had a rare moment in the public spotlight as a result of SCOTUS oral arguments in a case involving the law of Pennsylvania — our usually-fair-but-not-so-much-in-this-case Commonwealth. The issue was whether Pennsylvania could condition a corporation’s right to do business in the Keystone State on that corporation’s consent to personal jurisdiction in our overly exciting court system. We’ve written about this consent theory before, and we previewed the SCOTUS case here. If Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions can get away with it, then the Bauman and BMS SCOTUS personal jurisdiction decisions become something very near to dead letters. It seems that several of the Justices last week thought as much, as their questions evinced deep skepticism about this bogus jurisdiction-via-consent scheme. You’ve heard of long-arm jurisdiction statutes, right? These are strong-arm jurisdiction statutes.
But predicting SCOTUS rulings is a sucker’s game.
Meanwhile, press coverage of the SCOTUS arguments was predictably daft. Some commentators bemoaned how rejection by SCOTUS of jurisdictional consent via coercive business registration statutes might make it harder to sue corporations. That is utterly wrong. One can sue the corporation where it is incorporated or headquartered, or where the the events at issue happened. What is unfair about that? The only real losers would be plaintiff lawyers who apparently think there is a need and a right to sue companies where the plaintiff lawyers are located. Nothing propinks like propinquity. But no one should shed any tears for lazy and/or cynical forum shopping.
Today’s case, Armstrong v. Atrium Med. Corp., 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 195231 (E.D. Wash. Oct. 26, 2022), involves a more quotidian personal jurisdiction issue: can a product liability plaintiff drag a foreign parent company into court? We’ve written about this issue before (here, for example). Including a corporate parent in a lawsuit can be a nice bit of leverage for a plaintiff. It is an annoyance. It is unnecessary. Fortunately, courts usually do not smile upon it.
Continue Reading E.D. Wash. Finds No Personal Jurisdiction Over Swedish Parent Company
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