Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca6-14-03807/USCOURTS-ca6-14-03807-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 

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NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION

File Name: 15a0382n.06

No. 14-3807

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

MAXITRATE TRATAMENTO TERMICO E 

CONTROLES, ET AL., a foreign corporation,

Plaintiff,

JEREMY LEE HEDMAN,

Third Party Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

SUPER SYSTEMS, INC., ET AL., an Ohio 

corporation,

Defendant,

ALLIANZ SEGUROS S.A., fka AGF Brasil Seguros 

S.A.,

Third Party Defendant-Appellee.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN 

DISTRICT OF OHIO

Before: BOGGS and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges; HELMICK, District Judge.

*

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge. Jeremy Hedman traveled from Ohio to Brazil, where he 

was seriously injured in an explosion at a factory owned by a Brazilian company, Maxitrate 

Tratamento Termico e Controles. After he returned to the United States, Hedman filed a thirdparty complaint in the Southern District of Ohio against Maxitrate’s Brazilian insurer, Allianz 

Seguros. Seguros is affiliated with Allianz, a global insurer, but Seguros itself is an independent 

 

* The Honorable Jeffrey J. Helmick, United States District Judge for the Northern District of 

Ohio, sitting by designation.

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entity that is incorporated in Brazil, with headquarters in Brazil, and sells all of its insurance 

policies there. For those reasons, the district court held that it lacked personal jurisdiction over 

Seguros and dismissed the complaint. We affirm.

I.

Maxitrate is a Brazilian company that makes heat-treated metal products. Maxitrate 

purchases control panels for its industrial furnaces from Super Systems, Inc., an Ohio company. 

Hedman, an Ohio citizen, worked for Super Systems. In 2008, Super Systems sent Hedman to 

São Paulo to work on a furnace at Maxitrate’s factory. While Hedman was working on the 

furnace, pressurized gas escaped and caused a large explosion that killed two Maxitrate 

employees, injured two others, and seriously injured Hedman. 

Maxitrate sued Super Systems and Hedman in the Southern District of Ohio, alleging that 

Super System’s products were defective and that Hedman had been negligent. Hedman filed a 

counterclaim against Maxitrate, alleging that Maxitrate’s negligence caused the explosion, and 

that Maxitrate was therefore liable for his injuries. Maxitrate notified its insurer, Seguros, that 

Hedman had filed the counterclaim. Seguros responded that Maxitrate’s policy did not provide 

coverage for the claim, and declined to defend Maxitrate. Maxitrate and Hedman ultimately 

settled the counterclaim; in the settlement, Maxitrate accepted liability for Hedman’s injuries, 

and assigned to Hedman its claims against Seguros. Pursuant to that agreement, the district court 

ordered Maxitrate to pay Hedman $12,861,978.77 in damages. 

After the settlement, Hedman filed a third-party complaint against Seguros, alleging that

Seguros breached its contract with Maxitrate in bad faith when it denied that Maxitrate’s policy 

covered Hedman’s counterclaim. Seguros moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal 

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jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2). The district court granted the 

motion and dismissed the case. This appeal followed.

II.

We review de novo a district court’s dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction. Miller v. 

AXA Winterthur Ins. Co., 694 F.3d 675, 678 (6th Cir. 2012). A plaintiff bears the burden of 

establishing that a court has jurisdiction over a defendant. Where, as here, the district court 

resolves a Rule 12(b)(2) motion without an evidentiary hearing or discovery, the plaintiff need 

only make a prima-facie showing that jurisdiction exists. Air Prods. & Controls, Inc. v. Safetech 

Int’l, Inc., 503 F.3d 544, 549 (6th Cir. 2007). 

In a diversity case, whether a federal district court in Ohio has personal jurisdiction over 

a defendant depends on whether an Ohio state court would have jurisdiction. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 

4(k)(1); Miller, 694 F.3d at 678. An Ohio state court would have jurisdiction if state law 

provides for it and if the court’s exercise of jurisdiction satisfies the Due Process Clause. Id. at 

679. Here, Seguros concedes that jurisdiction would be proper under Ohio law. Thus, we need 

decide only whether the Due Process Clause allows an Ohio court to exercise jurisdiction over 

Seguros.

The Due Process Clause allows for two kinds of personal jurisdiction: general and 

specific. General jurisdiction allows a plaintiff to sue a defendant “on any and all claims,” 

regardless of the connection (or lack thereof) between the claim and the forum. Daimler AG v. 

Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746, 754 (2014). Here, Hedman concedes that Seguros is not subject to

general jurisdiction in Ohio. Specific jurisdiction, on the other hand, allows a plaintiff to sue a 

defendant only on claims that arise out of the defendant’s activities in the forum state. Id. For a 

defendant to be subject to specific jurisdiction in a state, the defendant must have “minimum 

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contacts” with the state “such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend traditional notions 

of fair play and substantial justice.” Walden v. Fiore, 134 S. Ct. 1115, 1121-22 (2014) (internal 

quotation marks and alterations omitted). To satisfy this standard, a plaintiff must show, among 

other things, that the defendant “purposefully avail[ed] himself of the privilege of acting in the 

forum state[.]” Miller, 694 F.3d at 680 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Here, Hedman must show that Seguros—a Brazilian company that sells insurance only in 

Brazil—intentionally did something in Ohio that would allow an Ohio court to exercise 

jurisdiction over Seguros. Hedman argues that Seguros purposefully acted in Ohio in several 

ways. 

Hedman principally contends that Seguros’s refusal to defend Maxitrate counts as

purposeful activity in Ohio, citing Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 (1984), in support. There, the 

Court held that tabloid journalists in Florida were properly sued for libel in California, where the 

plaintiff lived. The tabloid had sold over 600,000 copies in California, and the defendants knew 

that “the brunt of [the plaintiff’s] injury would be felt” there. Id. at 785, 789-90. Hedman relies 

on language in Calder suggesting that, if a defendant knows that its intentional acts will cause 

effects in a state, then that state can exercise jurisdiction over the defendant. See id. at 789-90. 

But the Supreme Court rejected that theory of personal jurisdiction (and that interpretation of 

Calder) last year in Walden. 134 S. Ct. at 1123-26. There, the Court held that Nevada could not 

exercise jurisdiction over a defendant from Georgia based merely on the defendant’s knowledge 

that his false affidavit would cause harm to two plaintiffs in Nevada. Id. at 1125-26. To hold 

otherwise, the Court held, would “improperly attribute[] a plaintiff’s forum connections to the 

defendant and mak[e] those connections decisive in the jurisdictional analysis.” Id. at 1125

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(quotation marks omitted). Thus, the Court held, “it is the defendant, not the plaintiff or third 

parties, who must create contacts with the forum State.” Id. at 1126. 

Here, Seguros did not create any contacts with Ohio. To the contrary, to the extent that 

Seguros’s decision not to defend Maxitrate (a Brazilian company) with respect to an accident in 

Brazil had effects in Ohio, those effects were the result of Hedman’s and Maxitrate’s decisions to 

litigate there. Indeed, Seguros’s decision to deny coverage was an affirmative decision not to go 

to Ohio. And a foreign defendant does not subject itself to personal jurisdiction in a state simply 

by refusing to litigate there.

Next, Hedman points to Seguros’s decision to sell an insurance policy to Maxitrate, a 

company that does considerable business in Ohio. According to Hedman, Seguros should have 

known that the policy might require Seguros to defend Maxitrate there. But the policy’s 

“Geographical Scope” provision limits coverage to “property, liabilities, or persons situated on 

Brazilian territory[.]” And the policy says that “[t]he competent jurisdiction to resolve litigation 

in relation to this contract shall be that of the domicile of the insured”—here, Brazil. Seguros’s 

decision to insure property in Brazil, therefore, is not purposeful activity in Ohio. See Miller, 

694 F.3d at 680.

Hedman responds that our decision in Payne v. Motorists’ Mutual Insurance Cos., 4 F.3d 

452 (6th Cir. 1993), dictates otherwise. There, a moving van insured by Motorists was involved 

in an accident in Tennessee. Id. at 455-57. Motorists’ insurance policy expressly provided for 

coverage anywhere in the United States or Canada. See id. at 454, 456. When the car went to 

Tennessee, therefore, Motorists’ coverage went with it—not as a result of the driver’s unilateral 

actions, but of the company’s purposeful decision to extend coverage nationwide. Here, in 

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contrast, the policy covers risks only in Brazil. Moreover, in Payne the accident occurred in the 

forum state, whereas here the accident occurred a continent away. Id. at 454. 

Hedman contends that Ohio law creates two other contacts between Seguros and Ohio. 

First, Hedman says that, under Ohio law, a breach of contract occurs in the jurisdiction where

performance was due. Seguros’s performance was allegedly due in Ohio, where Maxitrate was 

litigating the dispute over the cause of the explosion. But this argument just adds a state-law 

veneer to Hedman’s contention that jurisdiction is proper because Ohio was where Maxitrate felt

the effects of Seguros’s decision to deny coverage. As shown above, Walden forecloses that 

theory of personal jurisdiction as a matter of federal constitutional law, regardless of what Ohio 

law says. Second, Hedman asserts that Ohio Rev. Code § 3929.06 provides a direct cause of 

action for a plaintiff against a defendant’s insurance company. But that putative cause of action 

does not amount to purposeful availment by Seguros of anything in Ohio; and a state-law cause 

of action otherwise does not trump the Due Process Clause. 

In sum, Seguros is a Brazilian insurance company that contracted with another Brazilian 

company to insure property and persons situated in Brazil. Seguros has availed itself of nothing 

in Ohio, and thus is not subject to suit there.

* * *

The district court’s judgment is affirmed.

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