With one glance at the calendar, regular readers of this blog will have been able to predict the content of these prefatory paragraphs, later to be (tenuously) tied to today's case. On Monday and Tuesday, as we have for nearly twenty years, we attended the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, the second-oldest continuous sporting event in the United States (behind only the Kentucky Derby) in Manhattan. The show draws the best representatives of almost 200 dog breeds, including two breeds eligible to compete this year for the first time: the Nederlandse Kooikerhondje and the Grand Basset Griffon Vendeen. About 3,000 total entrants are narrowed, during daytime breed judging, to one "best of breed" winner from each breed, then (during the familiar nighttime televised portions) to seven group winners.
The climactic event is the selection of the best-in-show winner from the seven group winners. (BTW, if you haven't seen the movie Best in Show, we think it is one of the funniest movies ever made, and, like all good humor, it skates very close to a lot of truths.) This year, unlike some years, none of the "breeds of our heart" was represented in the final seven, so we watched with excited anticipation but without a favorite. Not so the sellout crowd. A pug named Biggie, with a sad human interest backstory (google it), got roars, as did Flynn the Bichon Frise and the Giant Schnauzer that was the top-winning show dog in the country for 2017. But the crowd favorite was a Sussex Spaniel (a cheerful-looking, low-slung, long-eared spaniel breed with a shiny golden-liver coat) named Bean. Every time Bean got close to the "bait" – the treats his handler was carrying – he sat up on his haunches and begged. Needless to say, the crowd swooned. And we admit that this was insanely cute. But Bean took it too far, doing his trick right under the judge's nose, including when was supposed to "free stack" (get himself into a stretched, square stance without his handler placing his feet in the proper positions).
Ultimately, the beautiful little Bichon was Best in Show, and Bean's begging was for naught, kind of like today's case (we warned you), a terrific jurisdictional decision out of the consolidated Xarelto litigation in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California. In In re Xarelto Cases, 2018 WL 809633 (Cal. Super. Feb, 6, 2018), the plaintiffs sued several manufacturers and a distributor, claiming various injuries and alleging the usual litany of causes of action. Appearing specially, the (non-resident) manufacturer defendants moved to quash service of the plaintiffs' summons, arguing that California courts lacked jurisdiction over them. In response, the plaintiffs served jurisdictional interrogatories and requests for production comprising 113 separate discovery requests, seeking information about marketing and clinical trials allegedly performed by the non-resident defendants in California, including free sample voucher programs, as well as information about the functions the resident distributor defendant performed for the non-resident manufacturers. The defendants moved for a protective order, alleging that none of the pending jurisdictional discovery was permitted under the United States Supreme Court's three recent jurisdiction decisions ( Bauman, BMS, and BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell, 127 S.Ct. 1549 (2017)), and the plaintiffs countered with a motion to compel responses to the outstanding discovery requests.
The court explained it weighed three factors in deciding whether to permit the jurisdictional discovery: 1) the nature of the jurisdictional facts the plaintiffs sought to discover; 2) whether sufficient methods of investigation were available to the plaintiffs without formal discovery; and 3) the likelihood that the plaintiff could establish the necessary facts. Xarelto, 2018 WL 809633 at *10. It concluded, ". . . [T]he Court has weighed these factors, and finds that Plaintiff has not made a prima facie case for personal jurisdiction in order to conduct the requested jurisdictional discovery." Id. (citation omitted).
First, under Bauman, because none of the manufacturer defendants was incorporated or had its principal place of business in California, the courts lacked general jurisdiction. Second, with respect to specific jurisdiction, noting that the (non-resident) plaintiffs were allegedly injured in their home states, the court held that, under BMS, neither the fact that clinical trials were performed in California nor the fact that the manufacturers hired a resident distributor was sufficient to establish that the plaintiffs' claims "arose out of" the defendants' contacts with California. As such, the court found, "the proposed discovery seeks information on, at best, merely tenuous contact between the Defendants and California." Id. The court concluded, "Consistent with BMS . . . , the requested discovery will not likely lead to the production of facts establishing jurisdiction over the defendant, based on the allegations of the complaint. Under these circumstances, the Defendants' requested protective order is appropriate." Id. at *11. That's right — not a single one of the 113 discovery requests was allowed.
We love this decision. Its correct application of the Supreme Court's mandates underscores the demise of litigation tourism and emphasizes the futility of plaintiffs' pervasive and reprehensible joinder of distributors in quest of jurisdiction. We hope other courts follow suit. And we'll keep you posted.
This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.
