Our colleague Stuart Gerson of Epstein Becker Green has a new post on SCOTUS Today that will be of interest to our readers: "The Supreme Court Takes a Lenient View of Personal Jurisdiction and 4th Amendment Seizures".
The following is an excerpt:
The Court rendered two opinions on Thursday, both interesting and impactful, one of them particularly significant with respect to civil litigation practice.
Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court arose following two motor vehicle accidents, one in Montana, the other in Minnesota, in which Ford vehicles were alleged to have been defective. Ford argued that the state courts' having personal jurisdiction over it could only exist if the company's conduct in the state had given rise to the plaintiffs' claims, and that the necessary causal link could be found only if the company had designed, manufactured, or sold in the state the actual vehicle involved in the accident. None of those factors existed here, where the vehicles at issue were brought into each state via resale elsewhere and subsequent relocation. Affirming the judgments of the two state supreme courts who had ruled against the company, every Justice (save Barrett, J., who did not participate) rejected the company's "causal link" proposition.
The lead opinion was written by Justice Kagan, who was joined by her increasingly frequent ally, the Chief Justice, along with Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kavanaugh. The remaining three Justices concurred in various separate opinions.
Click here to read the full post and more on SCOTUS Today.
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