The U.S. Supreme Court today released a significant decision on personal jurisdiction in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (No. 10–1491, slip opinion: link). (backgrounder here and here).
The Court unanimously denied the appeal. (more…)
Archive for the ‘in personam jurisdiction’ Category
SCOTUS rejects extraterritorial application of ATS in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.
April 17, 2013Ontario court pulls the rug out from under Home Depot USA and assumes jurisdiction over slip and fall case
March 29, 2012
Logo for The Home Depot. Category:Brands of the World (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In Young v. Home Depot (U.S.A.), 2012 ONSC 1971 (CanLII), the defendant Home Depot USA, Inc. ["Home Depot USA"] moved for a stay of proceedings on the basis that the Ontario Court should not assume jurisdiction of a tort action relating to a slip and fall accident that occurred on June 22nd, 2009 in Watertown, New York State, United States of America. The plaintiffs issued a claim out of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Peterborough, Ontario and named Home Depot, U.S.A. Inc., as a defendant. The plaintiff, Melanie Doris Young, claimed damages for a personal injury suffered when she tripped over a bunched up section of rug located at the entrance to the Home Depot store. She further alleged that she attended the store with her brother who found the Home Depot Canada and Home Depot USA sites on the internet in search of certain products. He determined that the cheapest could be obtained at the Watertown location and thus the reason for the trip to Watertown. (more…)
Whytock and Quintanilla, “The New Multipolarity in Transnational Litigation: Foreign Courts, Foreign Judgments, and Foreign Law”
July 20, 2011Christopher A. Whytock (University of California, Irvine, School of Law) and Marcus S. Quintanilla (O’Melveny & Myers LLP) have posted “The New Multipolarity in Transnational Litigation: Foreign Courts, Foreign Judgments, and Foreign Law”, Southwestern Journal of International Law, forthcoming. The abstract reads:
Conventional wisdom suggests that the transnational litigation system is essentially unipolar, or perhaps bipolar, with the United States and the United Kingdom acting as the leading providers of courts and law for transnational disputes. Our overarching conjecture is that this unipolar (or bipolar) era – if it ever existed at all – has passed, and that transnational litigation is entering an era of ever increasing multipolarity. If this intuition is correct, then it will be increasingly important for U.S. judges and lawyers to be comfortable handling a wide range of conflict-of-laws problems, and prepared to consult closely with their colleagues abroad.
In this Article – based on our remarks at the International Law Weekend-West Conference held at Southwestern Law School in February 2011 – we develop three aspects of this conjecture, corresponding to three dimensions of the new multipolarity in transnational litigation. In Part I, we discuss the growing relative importance of non-U.S. forums for transnational litigation. In Part II, we highlight the potential proliferation of foreign judgments brought to the United States for recognition or enforcement. And in Part III, we consider the pervasiveness of foreign law issues that are likely to confront U.S. judges and lawyers, and the accompanying challenges of making determinations of foreign law in the wake of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Bodum USA, Inc. v. La Cafetière, Inc.
A .pdf copy of the article may be downloaded from SSRN here.
Related articles
- Ryan M. Vassar, “Litigation Parallelisms: A Comment on Parallel Proceedings and Anti-Suit Injunctions Spanning the Parallels and Meridians” (thetrialwarrior.com)
- Call for Papers and Proposals: “Border Skirmishes: The Intersection Between Litigation and International Commercial Arbitration” (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
- Monestier on Transnational Class Actions (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
- Tanya J. Monestier, “Transnational Class Actions and the Illusory Search for Res Judicata” (thetrialwarrior.com)
U.S. Supreme Court Decision Narrows Personal Jurisdiction Over Foreign Manufacturers
July 11, 2011
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On June 27, 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States delivered its decision in n J. McIntyre Machinery Ltd. v. Nicastro, No. 09-1343 ["Nicastro"] [pdf]. In Nicastro, the Respondent Nicastro injured his hand while using a metal-shearing machine manufactured in England by J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. (J. McIntyre), both incorporated and carrying on business there. Nicastro filed a product liability claim in the New Jersey state court where the accident happened, but J. McIntyre moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Nicastro’s jurisdictional claim was based on three primary jurisdictional facts:
1. A U. S. distributor agreed to sell J. McIntyre’s machines in the U.S.;
2. J. McIntyre representatives attended trade shows in several States, albeit not in New Jersey; and
3. no greater than four J. McIntyre machines (the record indicates only one), including the alleged defective machine was shipped to New Jersey. (more…)
Antonin I. Pribetic
