well your argument next this morning in case sixteen four o five the n s f railway versus to r supreme court concluded that being s f is subject to general personal jurisdiction in montana for two reasons first it held that montana state courts exercised general all purpose jurisdiction over being s because being s f to systematic and continuous business activity in the state second it held that section fifty six of the federal employers are ability act confers personal jurisdiction on state courts both conclusions or rob first under this court's decision in diameter is not subject to general personal jurisdiction in montana because it is not at home in montana montana is not being a principal place of business nor its place of incorporation and there is nothing exceptional about being s f so at times it register in montana it did do business doesn't it i establish residency in multiple places i can be sued for all of my activities there correct so why can't a corporation your honor so the the the holding in diameter was that even doing a systematic continuous sizable business would not be sufficient to confer general personal jurisdiction i understand a corporation like a person which we seem to be doing why isn't there registration an agent for purposes of accepting service and bill if you treat the corporation as a person i think with this court's due process cases say is that you look for where the corporation could be fairly regarded as at home that would be the equivalent to the personal domicile and a dime learning goodyear this court suggested that the parodic matic places would be the principal place of business and the place of incorporation registering to do business is simply one part of a company's business activities but it does not in and of itself come anywhere close to subjecting a corporation to general personal jurisdiction  play in this case one is his registration as part of the overall level of activity engaged in by the company is that enough to make it at home clearly we think it cannot registration we're running trains through the state that's not enough to make it at home in montana there's a separate issue of whether registration in and there in that itself is some sort of implied consent to to be subject to general personal jurisdiction and the montana supreme court didn't reach that issue so with respect to section fifty six the montana supreme court reached a truly unique and unprecedented conclusion that congress in confirming the concurrent subject matter of the state  for the first time to confer personal jurisdiction as this court held in the second employer's liability at cases decided just two years after section fifty six was and acted section fifty six was designed to abrogate supreme court of feel confirmed that state courts retained concurrent subject matter jurisdiction concurrent subject matter jurisdiction is also a term of art that has for two hundred years since the judiciary act in the judiciary act has been understood to refer jurisdiction in montana state courts under the circumstances of this case we don't we well let me i'll take that it imparts because that was one part of it raises this even if it is i don't know if it was that essential for your are you a member just curious what  so i would just as kenny i would take it in two parts congress we believe could constitutionally provide for nationwide service of process provisions in federal courts i think where the issue gets very difficult is whether congress could prescribe the federal jurisdiction of the state courts it's not something that congress has ever done and there is no historical example of that and it would raise some serious federalism constraints and we also argue serious fourteenth amendment constraints in any event feel or does not attempt to do that again is the court in the almost contemporaneous decision in the second to players liability act made clear that congress was not trying to enlarge or regulate the jurisdiction of the state courts or to control their modes of procedure and i think the consequences of trying to read a special venue statute as containing a grant of personal jurisdiction would really call into question what the two hundred odd so special venue statutes in the federal code are doing whether they have some here to for unknown grant of personal jurisdiction may have language is simply not the way that congress traditionally has spoken to the issue of personal jurisdiction the may have language is currently in the general venue statute nobody thinks that thirteen ninety one provides for personal jurisdiction the general venue that congress speaks to federal personal jurisdiction is through changing the options for service of process and that was established in one thousand thirty eight in the tone versus broad case it was reiterated in roberts thousand twenty five when the court actually explored the difference between venue type language and jurisdictional type language and cited specific statutory examples of where congress had expanded federal court jurisdiction are you saying that service of process language is an absolute necessity i don't think it's an absolute necessity of the court the congress could say something about personal jurisdiction itself like in rule for but i do think there must be some method prescribed by congress as this court in aren't there some statutes that look like the first sentence of the statute that have been read as personal jurisdiction requirements i did i did respondents cite a couple any cases that infer service of process provisions from statutes that set up in the agencies and where the courts have held in those circumstances that unless we infer some kind of agency just you know won't be able to get out get out the door or do its job but by and large this court said i mean this court has never inferred a service of process provision in the court and he gave you know three very good reasons for why that would be a bad idea congress knows how to do it and so i don't want to presume the congress doesn't know how to do it second that legislative rule making has the benefit of better predictability  and and third that in light of the long tradition of how congress has spoken to these issues it would be unwise for courts to get into the business of common law rule making first personal jurisdiction one of the  leaky supporting the responsive says that adopting your position would create chaos industry what is your response to i think just the opposite is true justice alito adopting our rule would bring some predictability and some order  to the industry right now but it is true while the west feel the claims being filed in forms like montana and the like these cases where the plaintiffs are not from montana none of the alleged negligence occurred in montana none of the alleged injury occurred in montana and yet we're still subject to suit their so feel the plaintiffs using specific jurisdiction or general jurisdiction but going to forms that have a reasonable connection to the litigation will in fact you know bring order to this area but what about this some of that is working very far they routinely they were very far from their home their injured very far from home what would your do to them think that that individual would have a specific jurisdiction in the place where they were injured if they were regularly employed in a particular state let's say montana and they were sent out of state i think there would be there may well be specific jurisdiction depending on the analysis of the episode  supervisors and the person there was equipment from montana sent out with that person that caused an injury but specific jurisdiction would be available and of course the safety valve of all purpose jurisdiction would be available as well i'd like to reserve the remainder of my time thank you counsel mr chief justice and ma'am please the court so there are two questions before the court the court said in me that in order to assert personal jurisdiction you have to have a statute or a rule making the defendant amenable to service a process there's a question of here is that section fifty six or montana law we've explained why we think it's montana law and then the second question is if they're exercising service a process on montana law does is that general jurisdiction consistent with the standards the court set out and i'm lower and good year and we don't think that is so on particularly on the section fifty six question because that's one where there's a strong federal interest in not having words that don't say me thing about service of process being interpreted to in fact say something about service or process we have a first sentence that refers to venue only in federal court and then a second sentence referring to state courts but all that does is to clarify that there is concurrent jurisdiction in the state courts and we just don't see how you can get to confer all of personal jurisdiction in the state courts especially when we know very clearly from the legislative record that congress was trying to solve two particular problems the first in the first sense with venue in federal courts and then the second in the sense second sentence with making sure that state courts understood that they could hear these crimes i think it is petitioner's counsel suggested that we have not we are not aware of any example in which congress has used language of this type to confer personal or even more explicit language to confer personal jurisdiction in the state courts and also that even at the time back hundred ten congress knew how to confer personal jurisdiction if it wanted to we gave examples and of the clayton act for nine hundred fourteen in our brief the credit will be earlier act in petitioners brief and then these were also discussed in the robertson case from hundred twenty five in that congress knows how to do venue versus service a process that has continued up through the court's decision in omni so we just don't think that section fifty six should be interpreted to be the first statute did you that you could do it especially where the implication with respect to the second question would be to say that a company like b n s f is subject to general personal jurisdiction in twenty eight or more states if the court's decisions in good year and damn near mean anything it's that that just can't be correct considered your home as well and given the volume of activity in the state terms of the school plant where road goes through i forget the number of employees one isn't that fit in that additional  criteria court described that category very very narrowly as a place where the contacts are not just that there are continuous and systematic business contacts but where there are so significant that you consider the company at home there that it's like the company's domicile and the only court example that the courts given of that to this point is the perkins case where you have a company that actually relocated during the war from the philippines to ohio and there they said that it is in the hypothetical fifty fifty let's say the state has a kind of headquarters in delaware it's fifty one percent of its goods in new york and fifty one percent forty nine percent in california almost equal number of employees difference of ten percent let's say same amount of property whatever and i'm assuming this railroad could fit that description in states why isn't it that whole we are substantial about of its business is killing us well because that would make the railroad at home in so many places for a purpose of general jurisdiction in the court said that where the focus should be going forward and we think that this makes sense is in specific jurisdiction in the situation that you positive where there are these two states where a lot of things are happening that's where you would expect a lot of causes of action to arise and so there would be personal jurisdiction over the defendant there would just be on a specific jurisdiction the court conceived of general jurisdiction as a fallback a place where you couldn't just subject the defendant to suit and you are doing the bulk of your business equally why shouldn't you feel that you're going to be hauled into both places well it's the difference between being hauled into court for claims that arise out o related to the contacts with the state as opposed to claims that are just any kind of possible claims and i think the reason that the court talked about being at home is because it's the equivalent of like domicile for a person it's said what's the equivalent of a corporation a place where it voluntarily chooses to go to do its business it could see the benefits of that state's law and then it means that it also has to have the burdens and the burdens are not just that you would be subject to any claim or to the claims that are related to the state but to any kind of claim so in somewhere where there is that kind of relationship that the corporation has in terms of incorporation or principal place of this it's fair for the corporation like a person where they're domiciled to have to answer for any type of claim but if we're talking about somewhere that you the corporation is just doing business where it's not considered at home it's fair the court said for the corporation in that circumstance to have to answer for claims that are related to the form but here we have these claims that are just no relationship to the forum at all we don't have the plaintiffs from the forum we don't have any injury in the form the defendants are not at home or incorporated in the form so we do think it makes sense for general jurisdiction as the court conceived of it in goodyear and downward to be this kind of safety valve going forward and that where the bulk of the action would be is in the specific jurisdiction context because after all those are the places where things happened that are related to the litigation there's people there there's evidence there those states have an interest in having those claims adjudicated spending their juries and their resources on claims that rob related to what happened in the state the court has no further questions we'd urge that the judgment of the court below be reversed thank you thank you counsel language you know where stoop may be brought appears in other statues and has been interpreted in that way but i think this court should look at section fifty six as a whole we're not aware of another star that in a single paragraph has the same language that feel it does where it has a maybe it talks about where suits may be brought it then goes on to say that the jurisdiction of the state and federal courts would be concurrent and then has to vary are usually means that is that this is package where it has the maid maybe brought language there concurrent jurisdiction language and then the very unusual provision that actually prohibits removal of these state of these federal causes of action into federal court and i would say you know to at the time that congress amended feel in one thousand ten it intended for workers not to have to go to the placement corporation of the company or to leave far from their homes in order to bring suit regardless of where they were injured and the reality is  i think you can't think about this case if you don't accept or reading a feel as being fair because workers could still get specific jurisdiction over the railroad in a place close to their home that's simply not going to be the case for many of these workers well i think congress recognizing one thousand ten the railroad industry is unique you have in many cases workers traveling five six seven hours even to get to their starting work point where they then travel farther away so if you look for example at mr nelson he is a resident of the state of montana he was injured in the state of washington and under being assessed view he would either have to go to washington he'd have to go to terre county texas or he could go to delaware that's simply not the outcome that congress ever would have predicted given the language that it dropped in one nine hundred ten and what we know it was trying to do when it adopted  defend suit in the plaintiff's residence if we're not doing business there so the doing business language i think is actually seen as being more fair to defendants than just the plaintiffs residence standard and the other thing that i would point out on that that issue is that in one nine hundred forty seven congress again considered adopting a different standard for section fifty six it considered a plain just resident standard and it rejected it because it actually would have been used at that point to narrow the scope of places in which plaintiffs could have brought their suit congress was presented with evidence that plaintiffs were bringing suit similar to what our clients have done here where the only connection between the suit and the state was the fact that the defendant was doing business there well i haven't looked at a route map but the n s f i assume is doing business in a lot of states and this would allow plaintiffs whenever they reside wherever they are injured to sue and one state's right that's correct your honor and we think that that is what congress intended and it's congress knew that that wasn't fact happening in one thousand nine hundred even though the injury occurred somewhere else that's correct and i think it is because of the unique nature of the railroad industry you have not there is the nature of particular forms i mean the discussion in the briefs is that there's a reason that someone not a resident of montana injured in washington would want to sue in montana is that something you want to take into consideration well i think you can take into consideration but i actually think it many ways favors us there are good reasons why someone would want to bring suit in montana even if they were injured there even if they're not arrested and i mean i think it's b s have concedes there are a lot of these cases brought in montana and it's what's the good reason they would welcome a living and perspective if you want predictability you want to know that the court that you're going practical reality in terms of where people are bringing suit so i would say it's not the case that all of these cases are being brought in the state of montana i mean i think you know seven it's a me certainly try to make that portrayal but we don't have any hard data about that and certainly in speaking with attorneys who represent feel a plaintiff they bring them lots of different locations including you know other locations where people are not injured and the fact of the matter is the railroad is just doing business there the other thing i would say is that you know whether you're concerned about people green suit in the state of montana if you were to say that our clients could not bring suit here it would also mean that those clients who want to bring suit in their home states again in many instances are not going to be able to do that to the specific jurisdiction question i think you know we're in agreement that people could bring suit in the state where they were injured but i actually think that the analysis of specific jurisdiction beyond that state gets quite complicated pretty quickly you know it would depend on is this person for example primarily working in their home state in the nature of this industry has many of these these workers do not primarily work in their home states that we rarely if ever work there so in under those circumstances i think it is you know it's certainly not what congress had in mind when adopted the statute instead you know by adopting the statue we're going to make sure that people can find the defendant at any point or place or state along the railroad tracks and their bring their actions well then i can understand why congress i could understand why they might have wanted to allow the injured worker to sue where you know where the injury occurred or where the worker resides or where the company is headquartered but why that they would want to allow how a suit in a state that satisfies none of us really is hard to understand well your honor i think it is actually easier to understand if you sort of studied in the context of what was going on at that time the railroad there were thousands of these injuries and i think congress recognized you know these are highly sophisticated interstate transportation companies they can get to these places of litigation a lot more easily than injured workers who may have to travel three states over to get to the people i know i might add that would you could say that w justify saying provide a reason for saying you can sue where you live you could limit it to those only those states where they're doing business but why you would say you can sue anywhere has nothing to do with  either the person who's injured or the company or or the or where the injury occurs really it's hard to understand going forward well i do think it is the language that congress chose and i would say too with respect to the  has referred to the provision as a venue provision and i don't think that's inconsistent with our position because as we can see we think the first sentence does in fact can for both venue and personal jurisdiction in federal court so it's not inconsistent i would point your honor i think you know the perhaps the best cases in terms of support for our position are the pope and the boy cases so pope you had a situation very similar to this where someone brought suit in a state court that where the injury had not occurred the only connection was the railroad was doing business there and in that case this court said this section fifty six quote establishes petitioners right to sue in alabama it just we talk about it are page twenty nine of our response where the court has clearly state out of position that the doing business language in the first signs of section fifty six applies to state courts and i think the only way that you can make sense of that is to read section fifty six in the way that we do that takes the personal jurisdiction conferred by sutton and any any any other statute that does what you feel we do think it's an unusual statute that was called for by unusual circumstances probably the closest example is fifteen u s c seventy seven b it's part of the securities act and that sachi does actually have an expressed service of process provision with respect to federal courts it also has a concurrent jurisdiction language in it and it has in fact in at least some lower courts been interpreted or there's a disagreement among the lower courts as to whether that language actually  provides or permit state courts to exercise personal jurisdiction to the same extent as federal courts would as well the court and pope did mention personal jurisdictional that's right your honor we don't think we're not i'm arguing longest authority well i think it is one i certainly think the boy case again another this when we talk about of pages thirty one to thirty one thirty two of our brief the boy case is another example where again we're not arguing it's a personal jurisdiction case but it was  case in which this court read section fifty six including sentence two of section fifty six to confer what it called a substantial write that under another provision of feel that which prohibits any contract the intent of which is to exempt a carrier f the right i think they're referring to is the right to proceed in state court right that's correct yes you have to expect that to deal with the second sentence because it talks about the concurrent jurisdiction there's a difference between you can proceed in state court and question whether it's personal jurisdiction in a particular state court well i take your point your honor but i think we don't typically think of a provision that just says there's concurrent jurisdiction between state and federal courts and it's referring only to subject matter jurisdiction certainly in the circumstances like this where congress you know thought that there was this jurisdiction before and it just wanted to be extra sure to confirm and i don't think we don't typically think of concurren at what is section fifty six and doing if all it is doing is saying that you can bring a cost of action in federal court in certain venues and just reconfirming that state courts have subject matter jurisdiction you wouldn't don't take issue with the the proposition from being a staff that that is one thing that congress was doing with the concurrent jurisdiction language it was it was confirming that state and federal courts both had subject matter jurisdiction but we think given given the precedent given boyd and hope you're not writing on a blank slate in terms of how you interpret section fifty six hope didn't mention personal jurisdiction you know these are not personal jurisdiction cases but i do think the and through pope that the language of doing business in sentence one applies to sentence to somehow or applies to state court somehow we think that sentence to provides that necessary link if i could talk briefly about our alternative argument you know if this court were to read feel and not to permit state courts here to exercise personal jurisdiction we do think that under this court's determination to die miller and the proceeding precedent that there could be general jurisdiction here as well given the nature of being asked of contacts with the state of montana and i think one key in that analysis or one way to frame that analysis i montana through its predecessors has been engaged there before montana was even a state and helped to populate the state by bringing in farmers and ranchers are some of the history of this in the maintenance of way micus brief what is your argument that railroad companies are so unique that they should be subject to general jurisdiction everywhere i don't think that that would necessarily have to follow but i think it is a key ingredient as to why the n s f is at home in the state of montana but i mean at home in the state of montana and at home and every place else tha honor i think it would depend on the other states in which it operates and its history in those states the level of contacts i mean i think in addition to the history if you look at present day b n f that has a gigantic footprint in montana that's not true in all of the states in which it operates it has over twenty one hundred miles roughly twenty one hundred miles of track twenty two hundred employees in the state more than forty facilities in the state a permanent presence that it's i understand the notion that railroads and for those reasons they obviously have to have a lot of physical plant they have to have a lot of workers they you know traverse the state i understand how that might look like they're at home but there are a lot of other industries that have a significant impact i don't know are the interstate banks i mean there are airlines i suspect that there are agricultural companies that do a lot of business and covered a lot of land  beyond railroads here i think there could be aspects of other industries that would lend themselves to the same types of analysis but i i think the railroads actually are in a pretty unique segment of interest industry and in the sense of unlike interstate or in or international banks you know you depend on railroads to have a permanent physical presence in the state because otherwise you cannot actually you know guarantee that you can carry goods from one point of the country to national trucking companies companies they carry a lot of goods to and they can go in many different routes your honor i think here where you know i mean they're going to take what is  like the railroads going to follow the route tracks truckers are going to follow i e d well there's they're still not going to have that same sort of permanent physical presence in the state of laying down twenty one hundred miles of track the other thing that i would point out with respect to be n s f role in the state of montana i think to justice sotomayor is question about the registration we do have an alternative argument with respect to consent but we have all along also argued that the registration the long time doing of business in montana should should play a role and is just stinks from some of the the cases that this corset court has had before it in the past and you know one other thing to know which i think is again distinct from including dime or what we know here about being itself is that it is so integrated into montana's economic and political life it's set up its own government relation shop in the state of montana it's got lobbyist there to advocate for it all i'm sure a lot of other companies have government offices in the state well that may be true your honor and certainly i think in this analysis when you are looking at various factors that could lead you to conclude f is at home in the state of montana i think that is one factor that plays a role into it you don't have to worry about as you would in cases for example with you know foreign companies that are being dragged into court because their products happened to land in that state here you have a company that has a permanent physical presence and it's got lobbyist there who are looking out for its interests if it doesn't like what is happening in the courts the montana where the substantive law to which it is  in a district in which the defendant shall be doing business no your honor if i understand your hypothetical if we were to bring if this court decided that feel it did not address personal jurisdiction at all what would happen if we tried to bring our suits in montana federal court is that that federal court would say great you have venue but i look to rule for for personal jurists assuming we reach that issue right i suppose  create a topsy turvy scheme i think when congress enacted feel it assumes that most of these suits would but it what you're trying to get around is that they are out about two point four percent of its world sales in california and was the largest seller of luxury goods in california luxury cars and i suspect when you sell luxury cars in california it's really something so they had a very big market and the problem is how do you get to that and i know you're trying  making a valiant effort and so forth but a but i don't really see the difference well your honor we hope it's more than a valiant effort in the sense that we do think that there are key distinctions not just in the numbers here in terms of tracking employees and business but in terms of the nation operation is in montana we know that they get up to ten percent of their revenue in the state of montana which given that they operate in twenty eight states and a couple canadian provinces it has to be the case that that  is disproportionately large compared to the other states in which they operate point and if i could go back to your question justice sotomayor about if if plaintiffs were able to bring these claims in washington again i think an example of how far these workers frequently travel in order to bring their or frequently travel in the course of their their work for b n s f it in many ways is simply a coincidence whether they're injured at home versus injured somewhere else and of course they would have no way of knowing that in advance but i would say with respect to bringing suit in federal court i don't think it would completely solve the problem in the sense you know one congress thought these cases would be brought in state court it didn't want them removed or at least were plain to chose to follow them and state court did not want them to be removable and i think part of that is because these are personal injury cases some of them are low  dollar claims congress wanted the plaintiffs to have their choice of forum to with respect to you know if you want to take this kind of claim to a state court judge for whom this is the bread and butter of their docket you can do that and i think if you were to to limit these types of claims to federal court in montana for example or on the doing business rationale now one plaintiffs would still be very limited in terms of where they could use state courts but it also wouldn't be as easily accessible to them i mean most of the time federal courts only have one or two in a state and so it's not going to be as readily available of a forum for injured workers who you know certainly as compared to the railroads are going to be we don't we think the way that the montana court framed it i think it's not a helpful one to think about it what i would say is this i don't think that you can simply say directly doesn't apply because it was a foreign corporation but i do think dime or as earlier general jurisdiction cases had recognized continue to recognize the nature of context matter and so certainly i think once you start moving up the corporate chain once you start hopping into other continents and having to  extent that that is actually appropriate having to impute contacts of a subsidiary i think the nature of the contacts becomes so attenuated that at that point that transnational element of dimer actually does play a role it's  courts to process cases as saying the process protection depends on the particular line of business that you're in there are you know as to movement and ownership of property there are many industries cable companies agricultural business is and so forth to have physical plants and that transport people across the country and then with respect to feel or we don't think it would be helpful or faithful to the text or legislative history to interpret section fifty six in a way that grants personal jurisdiction when no other