Motion to Transfer Venue Granted, Brady v. Von Drehle Corp., 14-cv-01732 (Judge Vince Chhabria)
You might wonder why an Ohio resident would file a patent infringement lawsuit in the Northern District of California against a North Carolina-based paper towel and tissue manufacturer with no facilities or operations in the Bay area. It appears that Judge Chhabria was perplexed when that very scenario recently presented itself in a case before him. The result was that Judge Chhabria issued a succinct order transferring the matter to the Western District of North Carolina.
In Brady v. Von Drehle Corporation, the plaintiff was an Ohio resident and the defendant was headquartered and incorporated in Hickory, North Carolina with the majority of its operations also located in that state. Most of the party and third-party witnesses were located in North Carolina, along the East Coast, or in Europe. All relevant documents, including marketing, product design, and sales documents, were also to be located in North Carolina. Significantly, the defendant had no facilities in the Northern District of California.
Nonetheless, the Ohio-based plaintiff claimed that because one of the defendant's 300 distributors was located in Monterey, California, and because the defendant had a paper towel manufacturing plant in Nevada, venue in the Northern District of California was proper. Judge Chhabria was not swayed by this argument, as there was no indication that the Monterey distributor or the Nevada plant possessed any "unique or noncumulative information." The plaintiff's Rule 26 disclosures did not list representatives from either the distributor or the plant as potential witnesses. And the Nevada plant did not even produce the paper towels used in the challenged dispensers.
Moreover, while the Northern District of California and the Western District of North Carolina were equally convenient to the plaintiff given his residence in Ohio, there actually would be four added hours of travel time. In any event, even assuming both jurisdictions were equally convenient to the plaintiff, North Carolina was significantly more convenient for the defendant and the third-parties. Accordingly, Judge Chhabria transferred the case to the defendant's home district of the Western District of North Carolina.
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