PRODUCTSLIABILITY
Setting the Record Straight on Personal Jurisdiction and Products Liability by Will Ourand
Products liability defendants have churned out an ever-increasing number of jurisdictional challenges over the past few years. The catalyst for this new onslaught of motions is a series of SCOTUS cases ranging from the 2011 decisions in Goodyear Dunlop Tires v. Brown and J. Mcintyre Machinery v. Nicastro to the 2017 decision in Bristol-Meyers Squibb v. Superior Court. If you were to simply read a defense motion citing these cases, you would likely be left with the impression that everything you learned about personal jurisdiction during 1L Civil Procedure, from International Shoe to World-Wide Volkswagen, is no longer good law. Thankfully, that’s simply not true. This article will provide necessary background context as to the big picture issues in products liability personal jurisdiction disputes, will then examine the recent SCOTUS cases, will move on to analyze opinions across the country applying those SCOTUS opinions, and will conclude by explaining how to successfully defeat an erroneous jurisdictional challenge brought in a Florida products liability action.
I. Big Picture: Products Liability and Personal Jurisdiction
Products liability cases are particularly ripe for jurisdictional disputes for the simple reason that they often involve goods that are manufactured in a far-off state or country by an out-of-state corporation. The products then make their way into the consumer’s hands and then fail, resulting in injury. The manufacturers (and other entities in the chain of distribution) may then seek to distance themselves from the very same consumers who they were all too happy to profit from, by arguing that they cannot be subject to the jurisdiction of the consumers’ home states, the states where the injuries were caused, or the states where the products were sold, serviced, installed, or otherwise used. Instead, the defendants would prefer a world where they could pick the sole venue for claims against them — that venue being the state or foreign country where they were incorporated. When a defendant raises a jurisdictional challenge, the court must answer one question: does that defendant have “sufficient contacts” with 36 | November/December 2018 | www.FloridaJusticeAssociation.org
the state such that continuing with the lawsuit would not “offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”1 There are two possible paths to jurisdiction under this analysis. First, the court may have “general jurisdiction” if the defendant’s contacts are “continuous and systematic.”2 General jurisdiction would confer jurisdiction for any case, no matter the claims or issues.3 General jurisdiction is clearly proper in the defendant’s state of incorporation or where it maintains a principal place of business.4 There is currently a split of authority at the national level as to whether a defendant who has voluntarily qualified to transact business and designated a registered agent has consented to jurisdiction within that state.5 The Third, Fourth, and Fifth DCA have each held that a Florida court may exercise jurisdiction under these circumstances.6 However, in August, the Third DCA issued an opinion (which is non-final at the time of this writing) which held that this prior law has “yielded” to the recent SCOTUS decisions in Goodyear v. Brown and Daimler v. Bauman.7 I strongly believe this is an incorrect interpretation of those cases. Indeed, there is a recent trend of decisions across the country holding that neither Goodyear nor Daimler displaced existing law on consent jurisdiction via service on a registered agent.8 These decisions recognize a distinction between establishing jurisdiction based on a consent theory as opposed to establishing “at home” general jurisdiction based on “systematic and continuous contacts.”9 And, consent jurisdiction makes intuitive sense. After all, the company has chosen to invoke the benefit of the state’s laws to further its own business interests. Having done so, it only seems fair that it shouldn’t then be able to shirk its obligation to defend a lawsuit in that state. The second possible basis for jurisdiction is “specific jurisdiction,” which allows the court to exercise jurisdiction over the defendant for claims “arising out of” or “connected with” the defendant’s affiliations to the state.10 The seminal opinion on specific jurisdiction in products liability cases is the 1980 decision in World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson.11 The World-Wide Volkswagen majority famously articulated the “stream of commerce” metaphor, explaining that: “The forum State does not exceed its powers under the Due Process Clause if it asserts
