Those of us who finished law school more than five or ten years ago learned about personal jurisdiction through the lens of International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945), and its focus on “minimum contacts” analysis. We learned that a company can be sued in any state with which it has significant, ongoing contacts, such as an office, employees or bank accounts.

That was then. Recently, the Supreme Court has begun to tell us we were all wrong for thinking that way. Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014). Though the Daimler majority would have us think they are simply reinforcing what International Shoe really held, Justice Sotomayor described it as “a new rule of constitutional law that is unmoored from decades of precedent.” Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at 773. Our world has changed, and anyone suing or defending corporations must understand the new rules.
Continue Reading Personal Jurisdiction Under ERISA: Forget About Minimum Contacts