Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction is the power of a court to exercise control over a defendant. Jurisdiction can either be personal jurisdiction (control over a person or property) or subject matter jurisdiction (control over the issue of the case).

Subject Matter Jurisdiction
A court can exercise subject matter jurisdiction either because the case involves a federal question or because there is diversity of citizenship between the parties in the case. To qualify as a federal question the case must arise under an explicit federal right and remedy unless Congress has determined that there will be no private, federal cause of action for the issue. When there is a question about subject matter jurisdiction, the presumption is against its exercise. Additionally, the federal question must be pleaded in the complaint and not simply raised as a defense.

To qualify for diversity jurisdiction, there must be complete diversity such that no plaintiff is the citizen of the same state as any defendant.

To determine citizenship:


 * 1) Natural Persons &mdash; physical presence in a state/state of residence; intent to return/remain indefinitely
 * 2) Corporations &mdash; state of incorporation; principal place of business
 * 3) Associations &mdash; where each member resides

In addition to complete diversity, the amount in controversy for the case must exceed $75k

Personal Jurisdiction
Under the traditional basis of personal jurisdiction, a court can gain power to bind a defendant to judgment through physical presence, citizenship, consent, or waiver. Even if a defendant is a not a resident of the forum state they can be subject to jurisdiction and service of process while they are physically present within the territory or where they have property in the forum that is either the subject of the lawsuit or can be used to satisfy the judgment. The exercise of personal jurisdiction over a defendant must satisfy the requirements of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

There are various bases for personal jurisdiction over a defendant, including:


 * In personam jurisdiction &mdash; if a defendant is in the forum (or the air space above it) for whatever reason, except a trick or fraud on the part of the parties seeking service, they can be served for suit.


 * In rem jurisdiction &mdash; in a true in rem proceeding the property being seized is the same as the subject of the lawsuit, in a quasi in rem proceeding the property is not the subject of the lawsuit but is being used to satisfy a judgment.


 * Quasi in rem jurisdiction &mdash; jurisdiction over the interest of a known person in property that is unrelated to the underlying claim.

Additional basis for personal jurisdiction include:


 * Citizenship &mdash; a citizen of the forum state is always subject to personal jurisdiction no matter where they are served.


 * Consent or Waiver &mdash; on the basis of a forum selection clause in a contract a party may agree to be bound by the jurisdiction of a particular court. Such clauses will not be upheld if they are not vital to the contract, select a forum that is remote and alien to the parties and suit, or negotiated in bad faith.

Under the modern basis of personal jurisdiction, a non-resident defendant is subject to jurisdiction in any state where a long-arm statute purports to reach them and they have minimum contacts. A long-arm statute purports to reach a defendant if either the state’s statute specifically names acts that subject a person to jurisdiction or if the state has a general language statute that extends jurisdiction to the limit allowed by the Constitution. A defendant has minimum contacts with a forum state when it purposefully avail itself of the benefits and protections of that state. A non-resident must engage in some activity that is specifically directed towards the forum state. This activity must be intentional, substantial, confer a benefit, and give rise to the claim.

The seminal modern case regarding constitutional limits on personal jurisdiction is International Shoe Co. v. Washington. In International Shoe, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that “due process requires only that in order to subject a defendant to a judgment in personam, if he be not present within the territory of the forum, he have certain minimum contacts with it such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’” The “fair play and substantial justice” component of the International Shoe standard is typically referred to addressing whether personal jurisdiction would be “reasonable” under the circumstances.

In Burger King v. Rudzewicz, the Court recognized that the greater the showing of “reasonableness” the lesser the extent of “minimum contacts” with the forum that may be necessary to provide due process. In evaluating the reasonableness of personal jurisdiction, the Court in such cases as World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson and Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court has looked at a variety of factors, including:
 * 1) undue burden or inconvenience to the defendant;
 * 2) the interest of the forum state in hearing the dispute;
 * 3) the interest of the plaintiff in convenient, efficient relief
 * 4) the interstate judicial system’s interest in efficient dispute resolution; and
 * 5) the shared interests of the several states in furthering social policies.

Once minimum contacts have been established a court will determine whether an exercise of jurisdictions comports to notions of fair play and substantial justice, balancing the plaintiff’s interest in litigating in the forum against the defendant’s interest in avoiding the forum and then considering the forum state’s interest in adjudicating the claim. States are generally presumed to have a strong interest in interpreting their own laws.

The opinion in International Shoe has been read to acknowledge two types of in personam personal jurisdiction: general and specific. (Although the general and specific jurisdiction concepts can be found in International Shoe, the Court’s opinion did not use the terms “general jurisdiction” or “specific jurisdiction.”)

General Jurisdiction
General jurisdiction exists when the contacts that a defendant has with the forum state are so systematic and continuous that the defendant may be sued in the forum state on any claim, including claims wholly unrelated to the defendant’s contacts with the forum. In determining whether general jurisdiction exists, the defendant’s contacts with the forum should be analyzed qualitatively, not quantitatively (i.e., evaluating the nature of the contacts, not their sheer volume), to decide if they support the fair imposition of personal jurisdiction for all claims against the defendant.

Specific Jurisdiction
Specific jurisdiction looks at the intersection of the defendant, the claim and the forum, examining defendant’s contacts with the forum that are related to the underlying claim. The defendant’s contacts with the forum must be such that it should be reasonably forseeable that the defendant could be haled into court in the forum. Contacts justifying the exercise of personal jurisdiction must arise from the defendant’s “purposeful availment” of the benefits and privileges of the forum rather than from the defendant being involuntarily brought into contact with the forum by the unilateral acts of a third party.

For example, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hanson v. Denckla held that Florida lacked personal jurisdiction over a Delaware institutional trustee of the estate of a woman who established a trust while living in Pennsylvania and continued occasional correspondence with the Delaware trustee after she moved to Florida, concluding that the trustee had not purposefully availed itself of the benefits of doing business in Florida because the trustee’s only contact with Florida was its continued correspondence with the woman caused by her unilateral decision to move to Florida.

Contacts based on the Internet present particularly challenging problems because websites can be accessed from any state; in theory, defendant websites contain information bearing some relationship to the underlying claim thus provide the basis for personal jurisdiction in every state. In the influential case of Zippo Mfg. Co. v. Zippo Dot Com, Inc., the court adopted a sliding scale analysis: (1) an interactive website (e.g., a site permitting placement of orders relating to the claim from a computer in the forum state through the defendant’s website) would support jurisdiction; (2) passive website that lacked interactive features (i.e., the site merely provided information related to the subject matter of the claim) would not tend to support jurisdiction, and (3) websites between the passive and e-commerce extremes should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis (e. g., focusing on whether the website was interactive or commercial in nature) to determine whether they support jurisdiction.

Forum contacts and reasonableness should be evaluated in connection with both general and specific jurisdiction. The plaintiff bears the burden of showing sufficient contacts with the forum to support personal jurisdiction. Once that burden is satisfied, the defendant bears the burden of showing that jurisdiction would be unreasonable.