The standard used for decades to measure whether a corporate defendant is subject to general jurisdiction in New York under CPLR 301, the famous “corporate presence” or “doing business” test, has been all but declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in its January 2014 decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014). Just six weeks after its blockbuster opinion in Daimler, the court returned to the subject of personal jurisdiction in Walden v. Fiore, 134 S. Ct. 1115 (2014), a decision that will most certainly affect the application of CPLR 302(a)(3) in actions based on longarm jurisdiction.
The holdings in Daimler and Walden are still in their infancy, yet they have already been cited in dozens of state and federal decisions and will have a dramatic impact on the scope of personal jurisdiction as it existed prior to 2014. A review of recent pieces in the Law Journal demonstrates that there is much to be said about these pronouncements, which were also noteworthy because they were delivered with virtual unanimity. Our goal, however, is to address the subject from the New York State perspective, concentrating on how these decisions will affect daily life in the trenches of litigation for both plaintiffs and defendants. Lawyers who are versed in the subject will provide immeasurable value to the representation of their clients in our global economy.
