Registration, Fairness and General Jurisdiction
68 Pages Posted: 27 Apr 2016
Date Written: April 26, 2016
Abstract
The Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Goodyear and Daimler significantly narrowed the traditional understanding of general personal jurisdiction. Historically, general personal jurisdiction has provided a basis for judgment to be rendered against a defendant for a claim that did not arise in the forum in which the judgment was entered. With Goodyear and Daimler, the Court seemingly rejected the traditional understanding of general jurisdiction and adopted an almost exclusively domicile basis for general jurisdiction. These decisions swept away years of lower court decisions that had found general jurisdiction over corporate defendants based on corporate activities in the forum state. Part I of this article introduces the focus of this Article, asserting that in eliminating longstanding bases for the application of general personal jurisdiction, the Court both rejected the reasonableness factors that have been the hallmark of jurisdictional analysis since International Shoe and ignored the historical need for states to be able to exercise their sovereignty to protect their citizens by providing a forum for their citizens to seek redress.
Because of Daimler, courts have begun to seek alternative means to establish general personal jurisdiction over foreign corporations, including the use of registration statutes requiring businesses to register with the state and to appoint an agent to accept service of process in order to conduct business within a state as a basis for personal jurisdiction. Part II of this Article traces the historical development of the Court’s personal jurisdiction jurisprudence, from the territorial limitations of Pennoyer v. Neff to the abandonment of this overly restrictive approach because of the development of the modern mobile industrial state of the twentieth century. Part III of this Article then looks at the Court’s modern development of its personal jurisdiction analysis through the Court’s conclusion in International Shoe Co. v. State of Washington that contacts with a forum may serve as a substitute for actual physical presence in the forum. Part IV examines the role of “fairness” in the analysis of personal jurisdiction as articulated by the Court in World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson, where the Court outlined the factors to be employed in determining reasonableness. Part V analyzes the continued existence of the concept of general jurisdiction after International Shoe, looking specifically at the Court’s decisions in Perkins v. Benguet Consolidated Mining Co. and Hall v. Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A., in which the Court continued to hold that exercise of general personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation was appropriate where that corporation had “continuous and systematic contacts” within the forum. Part VI reviews the Court’s decisions in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown and Daimler AG v. Bauman, asking the question regarding the continued viability of the doctrine of general personal jurisdiction after these decisions. Part VII of this Article examines whether a corporation’s compliance with state registration statutes provides a basis for a state to exercise general personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation.
In the concluding section, Part VIII, this Article first proposes that despite the Court’s decisions in Goodyear and Daimler, the Court should, at a minimum, adopt an approach to general jurisdiction that incorporates the act of corporate registration. Where a corporation registers to do business in a state, appoints an agent for service of process in the state and actually conducts business in the state, that corporation consents to general jurisdiction in that state, when the state statute governing registration and appointment is explicit as to this result. This Article further asserts that, consistent with the Court’s opinion in Burnham, where a corporation’s statutorily appointed agent in a state is properly served within that state, that state may properly exercise personal jurisdiction over that corporation, particularly for injuries to citizens of that state that occur outside the state. Finally, this Article argues that the Court should revisit its rejection of the fairness factors in the general jurisdiction context, in order to restore the balance among the interest of a plaintiff seeking redress in her home state, the sovereign interest of a state in protecting its citizens when they are harmed, and the burden on a foreign defendant of having to defend in the forum state.
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