Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won
not tay ber own
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Tabberone is pronounced tab ber won |
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| This information is taken directly from the court opinion. It is not taken out of context nor is it altered. |
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From Dudnikov v Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts, 514 F.3d 1063 (10th Cir. 2008)
Having determined that defendants "purposefully directed" their activities at the forum state, due process requires us next to ask whether plaintiffs' "injuries arise out of" defendants' contacts with the forum jurisdiction. Many courts have interpreted this language to require some sort of causal connection between a defendant's contacts and the suit at issue. Of course, as Prosser and Keeton have noted, "[t]here is perhaps nothing in the entire field of law which has called forth more disagreement, or upon which the opinions are in such a welter of confusion," as causation doctrine, Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts 263 (5th ed., 1984), and this arena is no exception. Some courts have interpreted the phrase "arise out of" as endorsing a theory of "but-for" causation, see, e.g., Mattel, Inc. v. Greiner and Hausser GmbH., 354 F.3d 857, 864 (9th Cir. 2003), while other courts have required proximate cause to support the exercise of specific jurisdiction, see, e.g., Mass. Sch. of Law at Andover, Inc. v. Am. Bar Ass'n, 142 F.3d 26, 35 (1st Cir. 1998). Under the former approach, any event in the causal chain leading to the plaintiff's injury is sufficiently related to the claim to support the exercise of specific jurisdiction. The latter approach, by contrast, is considerably more restrictive and calls for courts to "examine[s] whether any of the defendant's contacts with the forum are relevant to the merits of the plaintiff's claim." O'Connor v. Sandy Lane Hotel Co., 496 F.3d 312, 319 (3d Cir. 2007). Yet a third approach, departing somewhat from these causation-based principles, instead asks whether there is a "substantial connection" or "discernible relationship" between the contacts and the suit. See id. at 319-20 (collecting cases). Under this theory, the relationship between the contacts and the suit can be weaker when the contacts themselves are more extensive. See Shoppers Food Warehouse v. Moreno, 746 A.2d 320, 335-36 (D.C. 2000). The parties point us to no case in which we have had occasion to announce a test as to when a contact is sufficiently related to a claim to support the exercise of jurisdiction, but we agree with our sister circuit that the "substantial connection" test inappropriately blurs the distinction between specific and general personal jurisdiction. See Sandy Lane Hotel Co., 496 F.3d at 321. General jurisdiction is based on an out-of-state defendant's "continuous and systematic" contacts with the forum state, Trujillo, 465 F.3d at 1218 n.7 (quoting Helicopteros, 466 U.S. 408), and does not require that the claim be related to those contacts. Specific jurisdiction, on the other hand, is premised on something of a quid pro quo: in exchange for "benefitting" from some purposive conduct directed at the forum state, a party is deemed to consent to the exercise of jurisdiction for claims related to those contacts. A relatedness inquiry that varies the required connection between the contacts and the claims asserted based on the number of the contacts improperly conflates these two analytically distinct approaches to jurisdiction. By eliminating the distinction between contacts that are sufficient to support any suit and those that require the suit be related to the contact, it also undermines the rationale for the relatedness inquiry: to allow a defendant to anticipate his jurisdictional exposure based on his own actions. See Linda Sandstrom Simard, Meeting Expectations: Two Profiles For Specific Jurisdiction, 38 Ind. L. Rev. 343, 366 (2005). |
