Wajert & Blum: “Consent” to Jurisdiction by Registering to Do Business
The Supreme Court’s guidance may come in the battle on the attempt to find personal jurisdiction over out-of-state product sellers and other foreign defendants, based on the companies’ registration to do business within a state.
No longer a sleepy backwater of civil procedure, the question of when a state may assert personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant has become an increasingly contested and crucial litigation issue. With internet-based commerce, nationwide advertising, and the “virtual presence” of product sellers, the issue of amenability to suit is of no small significance to corporate defendants and the plaintiffs’ bar alike. The Supreme Court of the United States long ago decided that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects a defendant’s liberty interest in not being subject to the binding judgment of a forum with which the defendant has insufficient “contacts, ties, or relations.” Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 319 (1945).
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