General jurisdiction is a form of personal jurisdiction that subjects a defendant to any and all claims asserted against it in a given forum. Where the defendant is a corporation, general jurisdiction subjects it to personal jurisdiction in the courts of a state on any claim, notwithstanding the fact that there is no nexus between the claim being asserted and the corporation’s activity in the forum state.

Late last month the Second Department, in Aybar v. Aybar, 2019 NY Slip Op 00412 (2d Dep’t 2019), confronted the question of whether a foreign corporation’s registration to do business in New York under Business Corporations Law §§1301(a) and 1304(a)(6) constitutes consent to general jurisdiction in New York. The Aybar court concluded:

We consider on these appeals whether, following the United States Supreme Court decision in Daimler AG v Bauman (citation omitted), a foreign corporation may still be deemed to have consented to the general jurisdiction of New York courts by virtue of having registered to do business in New York and appointed a local agent for the service of process. We conclude that it may not.