Why Daimler Accommodates Personal Jurisdiction in Mass Tort Litigations
24 Pages Posted: 9 Jun 2016 Last revised: 13 Aug 2017
Date Written: June 7, 2016
Abstract
Unified administration of mass torts in centralized venues serves numerous functional, fairness, efficiency and consistency objectives. Requisite is the forum court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over the parties. Recent Supreme Court opinions concerning personal jurisdiction, culminating in Daimler, have not yet addressed mass tort litigation. This article demonstrates that Daimler’s theoretical underpinnings are attentive to the "practical necessities" of the litigation at issue, and accommodate personal jurisdiction over multistate entities in mass tort litigations. This is because Daimler's narrowing of general personal jurisdiction contemplates the liberalized and context-sensitive exercise of specific personal jurisdiction.
Keywords: Daimler, Jurisdiction, Von Mehren, Specific Jurisdiction, Mass Torts
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