Analyzing a Problem

Analyzing a Problem

Every specific-jurisdiction problem applies the test of International Shoe Co. v. Washington: a state may bind a defendant who is not present in the state only if the defendant has such minimum contacts with the forum that maintaining the suit does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. The sections above broke that formula into three requirements. The defendant must have purposeful contacts with the forum, the claim must arise out of those contacts, and exercising jurisdiction must be fair and reasonable. All three must be met, and strength on one never excuses failure on another.¹ A forum that is convenient for the witnesses and parties, for instance, cannot stand in for minimum contacts.²

Take the requirements in the order in which each depends on the one before. A claim with no tie to anything the defendant voluntarily did in the forum cannot proceed on specific jurisdiction at all. A contact that the plaintiff or a third party created is not the defendant's own, and it leaves the fairness factors with nothing to weigh. Fairness comes last because it can only cut back a jurisdiction that the earlier steps would allow.

Statutory authority comes before any of the constitutional steps. When the defendant is not found in the forum state, that state needs a long-arm statute covering this type of case, and the plaintiff must serve the defendant as the statute requires; otherwise the judgment is likely to be invalid, even though due process would have allowed the suit.³ In federal court, Rule 4(k)(1)(A) imports state law, reaching a defendant who is served within the state, who would be subject to general jurisdiction in the state's courts, or who would be subject to long-arm specific jurisdiction there.⁴ A federal court in New York therefore asks about the defendant's contacts with New York.

The first step is a quick sort, made on a first reading of the stem, and its answer routes the rest of the problem. A no sends the claim to general jurisdiction, where a corporation is at home only in the state where it is incorporated or the state of its principal place of business, and the remaining steps never begin.⁸ A yes gives you facts to test as candidate contacts. The second step then asks who created each candidate, because a contact counts only if the defendant itself made it, and the third returns to the link between claim and contacts in finer detail.

Pack-More Corporation shows the sequence on a record that favors the plaintiff. It is a North Dakota corporation based in Fargo, with no property, offices, telephone numbers, or employees in New York.⁹ It nonetheless sold about $1 million of goods to New York customers during the relevant period, including the allegedly defective loading device. A Town of Oyster Bay employee bought that device after seeing a Pack-More advertisement in a magazine directed at New York readers.¹⁰ A New York plaintiff injured in New York sues Pack-More there, alleging that it manufactured and sold the defective device that caused the injury, and Pack-More moves to dismiss. It argues that defending in a hostile forum more than a thousand miles from Fargo would be burdensome and expensive, and that, with no property, offices, telephone numbers, or employees in New York, it did not purposefully avail itself of the forum.¹¹

At the first step, the claim alleges that Pack-More made and sold the very device that injured the plaintiff, and Pack-More sold that device to a New York customer, so the claim connects to its New York business.¹² At the second step, the missing New York property and offices do not answer the question, which is what Pack-More itself did. Roughly $1 million in New York sales, including the sale of this device after an advertisement aimed at New York readers, shows that the company served the New York market and purposefully availed itself of the forum.¹³ Nothing here resembles World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, where a car reached Oklahoma only because its New York buyers drove it there; the buyer in this problem was a New York customer reached by the company's own advertisement and sale. The third step is easy for the same reason: the claim grows out of that very sale, so the link is causal, and the broader reading of relate to in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court is not needed.

At the fourth step, Pack-More would bear some burden in traveling across the country to defend, but the plaintiff's interest in suing in New York, where he lives and where the incident occurred, and the state's interest in providing a forum for its residents outweigh it. A defendant that purposefully directed its activities at forum residents must present a compelling case that other considerations make jurisdiction unreasonable, and ordinary expense and distance do not make that case.¹⁴

Write out every step, even when the facts lean heavily one way. The model answer to this problem scores general personal jurisdiction as a separate item worth four or five points, so an answer that stops after contacts leaves points unclaimed.¹⁵ Fairness rarely decides a case, but it can: in Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, a severe burden on a foreign defendant outweighed the slight interests of the plaintiff and the forum.

The sequence can also end at its first step. A company that does business in New York has made a purposeful contact there, yet a claim that has nothing to do with that business does not relate to the contact. The New York court then needs general jurisdiction, and a company that is neither incorporated nor headquartered in New York is not at home there.¹⁶ Extensive forum sales do not change that result, as a second scene built on Pack-More shows.

The New York sales did no work in that scene, and that is the lesson of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court: a state court cannot exercise jurisdiction over a defendant for nonresident plaintiffs' claims that lack any forum-related activity or in-forum injury, even when the defendant is subject to jurisdiction there as to resident plaintiffs' similar claims.¹⁷ Sorting for relatedness first also saves time, because it keeps you from writing a paragraph on purposeful availment that the claim cannot use.

The second step takes a different form depending on how the contact arose, and the earlier sections supply the form for each. A product that reached the forum through independent distributors raises the question whether the manufacturer targeted the forum state itself; a majority of the present Court would likely hold that a manufacturer that did not advertise there, travel there to sell, or direct distributors to push sales there lacks minimum contacts, as the five Justices who ruled against the plaintiff in J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro did on roughly similar facts, and foreseeing that some units might arrive does not change the answer.¹⁸ A contract turns on whether the defendant entered a long-term, interdependent relationship with a forum resident, with contemplated future consequences in the forum and perhaps a choice-of-law clause favoring it, as in Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz.¹⁹ An intentional tort turns on whether the defendant expressly aimed its conduct at the forum, the question in Calder v. Jones. A website turns on whether the defendant targeted forum residents: operating a site that some in-staters accessed, with no sign of aiming at them, probably is not a minimum contact where the claim does not relate to those accesses.²⁰ In every setting the common error is to count a forum fact that the plaintiff or a third party created as though it were the defendant's own contact, so sort each forum fact in a stem by who did it.