The Exercise of Specific Jurisdiction Over Non-Resident Class Members’ Claims 

The Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, San Francisco Cty., 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017), reaffirmed that a court may not exercise specific personal jurisdiction unless the defendant has itself engaged in suit-related forum activity that gives rise to the particular plaintiff’s own claims. Bristol-Myers was not a class action, and the court did not decide whether defendants may be subject to specific jurisdiction as to claims made by absent class members located outside the forum. The majority of federal district courts to consider the issue have held that Bristol-Myers does not apply to the claims of absent class members, but a number of courts have held otherwise. Last month, the U.S. Courts of Appeals began to weigh in, with the Fifth, Seventh, and D.C. Circuits issuing decisions, but significant uncertainty remains as to whether—and at what stage of litigation—defendants can seek dismissal of absent class members’ claims for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Background

In Bristol-Myers, more than 600 named plaintiffs sued defendant, a Delaware corporation headquartered in New York, in a mass action in California state court, alleging that they were harmed by its prescription blood thinner Plavix. While some plaintiffs were California residents, most were not, and had neither purchased the product in California nor were injured there. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected California’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over these non-resident plaintiffs’ claims because they did not reside in California and Bristol-Myers’ alleged tortious conduct occurred elsewhere. The similarity between the resident and nonresident plaintiffs’ claims was not sufficient to create specific jurisdiction as to claims lacking a connection with California. Since the plaintiffs’ claims had been consolidated into a mass action through California procedural law, Justice Sotomayor’s dissent noted that the majority “does not confront the question whether its opinion here would also apply to a class action in which a plaintiff injured in the forum State seeks to represent a nationwide class of plaintiffs, not all of whom were injured there.” 137 S. Ct. at 1789, n.4. Nor did Bristol-Myers—which concerned state claims and state-court jurisdiction limited by the Fourteenth Amendment—address its applicability to federal suits under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Id. at 1784.