By: Derek Hawkins//June 21, 2017//
United States Supreme Court
Case Name: Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, et al
Case No.: 16-466
Focus: Jurisdiction
California courts lack specific jurisdiction to entertain the nonresidents’ claims.
“The personal jurisdiction of state courts is “subject to review for compatibility with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.” Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. 915, 918. This Court’s decisions have recognized two types of personal jurisdiction: general and specific. For general jurisdiction, the “paradigm forum” is an “individual’s domicile,” or, for corporations, “an equivalent place, one in which the corporation is fairly regarded as at home.” Id., at 924. Specific jurisdiction, however, requires “the suit” to “aris[e] out of or relat[e] to the defendant’s contacts with the forum.” Daimler, supra, at ___ (internal quotation marks omitted). The “primary concern” in assessing personal jurisdiction is “the burden on the defendant.” World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U. S. 286, 292. Assessing this burden obviously requires a court to consider the practical problems resulting from litigating in the forum, but it also encompasses the more abstract matter of submitting to the coercive power of a State that may have little legitimate interest in the claims in question. At times, “the Due Process Clause, acting as an instrument of interstate federalism, may . . . divest the State of its power to render a valid judgment.” Id., at 294”
Reversed and remanded
Dissenting: Sotomayor
Concurring: