Personal Jurisdiction Archives - Faegre Drinker on Products

Category: Personal Jurisdiction

Register to Do Business, Register to Be Sued? Illinois’ New Jurisdictional Trap for Toxic Tort Litigants

For companies operating nationwide, rules governing where they can be sued are consequential — especially in high-exposure toxic tort litigation. Toxic tort cases often involve claims over exposure to substances like asbestos, lead paint, pesticides, pharmaceuticals or industrial pollution and frequently target out-of-state corporations whose products or activities reach far beyond their corporate home base. Illinois’ enactment of SB 328, which amends the Illinois long-arm statute and Business Corporation Act of 1983, raises the stakes in these cases even more, conferring general jurisdiction over companies who register or merely transact business in Illinois.

Consent by registration statutes have been one of the most hotly debated legal questions in the general jurisdiction arena. General jurisdiction is a court’s authority to hear all claims against a defendant, regardless of where the alleged conduct took place. General jurisdiction is reserved for the forums where a defendant is “at home.”¹ For corporations, this is usually the corporation’s place of incorporation or principal place of business.² Yet some argue that simply registering to do business in a state should also open the door to being sued there, even if the dispute has little to no tie to that forum.

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How to Succeed in Business (in Philadelphia) Without Really Trying (Your Case There, Because Venue Isn’t Proper)

Venue rulings in Pennsylvania affect many defendants in products cases. Those incorporated here, and those sued on allegations that their products caused harm here, of course. And, for now at least, it includes corporate defendants registered to do business in Pennsylvania. They are subject to general jurisdiction, including for claims unrelated to the Commonwealth, under Pennsylvania’s unique “consent to jurisdiction” statute. That statute was upheld as consistent with due process in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 600 U.S. 122 (2023).

And with many serious personal injury cases being filed in Philadelphia – a venue described in a Mallory concurring opinion as “reputed to be especially favorable to tort plaintiffs” – the stakes involved in venue disputes are higher than ever. That is even more evident after several recently reported verdicts in product cases, one approaching $1 billion and one exceeding $2 billion.

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Supreme Court Reinstates Statutory “Consent” to General Personal Jurisdiction

On June 27, 2023, the United States Supreme Court decided Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 2023 WL 4187749, 600 U.S. ___ (June 27, 2023), a decision that likely will reinvigorate forum-shopping efforts by plaintiffs in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and possibly elsewhere. The decision—supported by a plurality of Justices and the concurrence of Justice Alito—upholds a Pennsylvania law that requires out-of-state corporations registering to do business in Pennsylvania to consent to general personal jurisdiction within the Commonwealth. Overlooking decades of personal jurisdiction jurisprudence, Mallory reinstates a form of personal jurisdiction previously cast by many courts as a dead letter: general jurisdiction by statutory “consent.”

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Where No Forum Contacts “Relate To” Claims at Issue, Ninth Circuit Affirms Dismissal for Lack of Specific Personal Jurisdiction

Specific personal jurisdiction can be a very straightforward concept. If a plaintiff claims to have been injured by a product that the defendant itself sold directly to plaintiff at a store within the forum state, disputes over specific personal jurisdiction would be rare. Other cases can be closer calls, particularly when a defendant has extensive contacts within a forum but none of them are causally related to the plaintiff’s claims. At what point does a defendant’s purposeful availment of a forum cease to be “related to” a plaintiff’s claims? The Ninth Circuit offered some helpful guidance on that issue in its decision in Yamashita v. LG Chem, Ltd., — F.4th —, 2023 WL 2374776 (9th Cir. Mar. 6, 2023).

Plaintiff in Yamashita was a Hawaii resident who brought a personal injury/products liability suit in Hawaii state court. The suit named two defendants. The first was a South Korean company that manufactured a battery that Plaintiff alleged had caused him injury. The second, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the South Korean company, was a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Georgia. It did not manufacture the product at issue but distributed it within the United States. Both defendants denied ever selling the product directly to individual consumers. The defendants removed the case to the District Court for the District of Hawaii and moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The district court granted the motion, and Plaintiff appealed.

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5 Major Drug and Device Developments of 2022

As we ring in the new year, it is time once again to reflect on some of the most significant legal developments for drug and device companies this year. The list below is by no means exhaustive (who could forget the Rule 702 updates that took place this year, which will carry over into 2023?), but provides a brief recap and assessment of five of the most interesting and consequential developments affecting drug and device law in 2022.

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Passengers on Litigation Tourism Train Get Review from Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court will soon consider whether the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from requiring that a corporation consent to personal jurisdiction in order to conduct business there.

The question arises from a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case, Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railroad Co., 266 A.3d 542 (Pa. 2021), which we wrote about here. In Mallory, plaintiff Robert Mallory attempted to hold the Norfolk Southern Railway Co. liable for the colon cancer he allegedly developed after being exposed to chemicals during the two decades that he worked for the railroad in Virginia and Ohio.

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