Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-12-16043/USCOURTS-ca9-12-16043-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
ATR
Appellee
Aero Caribbean
Appellee
Cubana De Aviacion, S.A.
Appellee
Empressa Aerocaribbean, S.A.
Appellee
GIE Avions de Transport Regional
Appellee
Eliezer Mendoza Martinez
Appellant
Lorenzo Mendoza Martinez
Appellant
Eliu Mendoza
Appellant
Gloria Martinez Montes
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

LORENZO MENDOZA MARTINEZ;

ELIEZER MENDOZA MARTINEZ; ELIU

MENDOZA; GLORIA MARTINEZ

MONTES,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

AERO CARIBBEAN; EMPRESSA

AEROCARIBBEAN, S.A.; CUBANA DE

AVIACION, S.A.; ATR; GIE AVIONS

DE TRANSPORT REGIONAL,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 12-16043

D.C. No.

3:11-cv-03194-

WHA

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of California

William Alsup, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

April 7, 2014—San Francisco, California

Filed August 21, 2014

Before: Barry G. Silverman, William A. Fletcher,

and Jay S. Bybee, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge W. Fletcher

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2 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

SUMMARY*

Personal Jurisdiction

The panel affirmed the dismissal for lack of personal

jurisdiction of a tort lawsuit against a French company.

The panel held that Burnham v. Superior Court, 495 U.S.

604 (1990) (holding that personal service upon physically

present defendant suffices to confer jurisdiction, without

regard to whether defendant was only briefly in state or

whether cause of action was related to his activities there),

does not apply to corporations. Accordingly, service of

process on a corporation’s officer within the forum state does

not create general personal jurisdiction over the corporation. 

The panel held that a court may exercise general personal

jurisdiction over a corporation only when its contacts “render

it essentially at home” in the state. Applying Daimler AG v.

Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746 (2014), the panel concluded that

under this “demanding” jurisdictional standard, the

defendant’s contacts were insufficient to subject it to general

jurisdiction in California.

COUNSEL

Brian J. Malloy (argued), Thomas John Brandi, Daniel

Dell’Osso, The Brandi Law Firm, San Francisco, California,

for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 3

Eric C. Strain (argued), Cameron Robert Cloar, Brian C.

Dalrymple, Nixon Peabody LLP, San Francisco, California,

for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiffs, the heirs of Lorenzo Corazon Mendoza

Cervantes, appeal the district court’s dismissal of their claims

against Avions de Transport Régional (“ATR”) for lack of

personal jurisdiction. Cervantes was a passenger on an

airplane that crashed in Cuba, killing everyone aboard. ATR,

a French company, designed and manufactured the airplane. 

Plaintiffs sued ATR in federal court in California, alleging

that ATR’s defective design and construction of the airplane

caused the crash.

We must decide whether, under Burnham v. Superior

Court, 495 U.S. 604 (1990), service of process on a

corporation’s officer within the forum state creates general

personal jurisdiction over the corporation. We hold that

Burnham does not apply to corporations. A court may

exercise general personal jurisdiction over a corporation only

when its contacts “render it essentially at home” in the state. 

Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746, 751 (2014)

(alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). Because

ATR is not otherwise “essentially at home” in California, and

service on its corporate officer did not render it so, we affirm

the district court.

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4 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

I. Background

ATR designs, manufactures, and sells aircraft. In

November 2010, an airplane designed and built by ATR

crashed approximately 200 miles southeast of Havana, Cuba. 

All sixty-eight people on board the airplane died, including

Cervantes. In 1995, ATR had sold the airplane to Commuter

Finance IV Ltd., a Grand Cayman company, which in the

same year sold the airplane to Continental Airlines, Inc., a

Texas corporation. Plaintiffs allege that at the time of the

crash, the airplane was owned, maintained, serviced, and

operated by some combination of Aero Caribbean, Empresa

Aerocaribbean S.A., and Cubana de Aviacion S.A.,

international airlines based in Cuba. There is no evidence the

airplane was ever operated in California or owned by a

California citizen or resident.

ATR is organized under French law. Its headquarters and

principal place of business are in France. It is not licensed to

do business in California, and it has no office or other

physical presence there. It purchases parts from suppliers in

California, sends representatives to California to promote its

business, and advertises in trade publications available in

California. It has sold airplanes to Air Lease Corp., a

California corporation. Empire Airlines, a regional airline

unaffiliated with ATR, operates ATR airplanes on its route

between Santa Barbara and Ontario, California. Empire

Airlines purchased its ATR airplanes secondhand from third

parties, not directly from ATR. ATR North America, a

wholly owned subsidiary of ATR, had its headquarters in

Virginia at the time of the crash. It has since relocated its

headquarters to Florida.

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 5

Cervantes’s widow, Gloria Martinez Montes, and his

three sons, Lorenzo Mendoza Martinez, Eliu Mendoza, and

Eliezer Mendoza Martinez, sued ATR in the United States

District Court for the Northern District of California. They

alleged claims for products liability, negligence, breach of

warranty, and wrongful death against ATR. Plaintiffs also

alleged various claims, which are not at issue in this appeal,

against Aero Caribbean, Empressa Aerocarribean S.A., and

Cubana de Aviacion S.A (collectively, “the Cuban

defendants”). Three of the four plaintiffs reside in California. 

Montes resides in Mexico.

Plantiffs served the summons and complaint on ATR at

its headquarters in France. ATR moved to dismiss the

complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction. The district court

held that plaintiffs’ allegations did not support personal

jurisdiction over ATR, but it did not immediately grant

ATR’s motion. Instead, the court held the motion in

abeyance and gave plaintiffs slightly more than two months

to conduct limited jurisdictional discovery. During the

discoveryperiod, plaintiffs served copies of the summons and

complaint on ATR’s vice president of marketing while he

was in California attending a conference on ATR’s behalf. 

ATR does not dispute that this method of service was proper

under California law. See Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 416.10(b).

After the close of discovery, plaintiffs filed a

supplemental opposition to ATR’s motion to dismiss. 

Plaintiffs argued first that their in-state service on ATR’s vice

president of marketing created general personal jurisdiction

over ATR under Burnham v. Superior Court, 495 U.S. 604

(1990). Second, plaintiffs argued that ATR’s contacts with

California, not limited to the transient presence of ATR’s vice

president, were sufficiently extensive to create general

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6 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

personal jurisdiction. Plaintiffs also requested additional

discovery to investigate ATR North America’s contacts with

California.

The district court granted ATR’s motion to dismiss and

denied plaintiffs’ request for additional jurisdictional

discovery. Plaintiffs appealed. At that time, the Cuban

defendants had not yet been served. After plaintiffs filed

their notice of appeal to this court, they served the Cuban

defendants and continued to pursue their claims against those

defendants in the district court. Accordingly, we held that the

district court’s order granting ATR’s motion to dismiss was

not an appealable final judgment and ordered a limited

remand for the district court to decide whether to certify its

order as an appealable final judgment under Federal Rule of

Civil Procedure 54(b). Mendoza Martinez v. Aero

Caribbean, No. 12-16043 (9th Cir. May 30, 2014)

(unpublished order remanding to district court). We retained

jurisdiction over this appeal. Id. at *6.

On limited remand, the district court certified under Rule

54(b) its order dismissing plaintiffs’ claims against ATR. We

now have jurisdiction over that order under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II. Standard of Review

We review de novo the district court’s decision that it

lacks personal jurisdiction over ATR. See Schwarzenegger

v. Fred Martin Motor Co., 374 F.3d 797, 800 (9th Cir. 2004). 

Plaintiffs bear the burden of showing that jurisdiction is

proper, but “[w]here, as here, the motion is based on written

materials rather than an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff[s]

need onlymake a prima facie showing of jurisdictional facts.” 

Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). We review for abuse

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 7

of discretion the district court’s denial of plaintiffs’ request

for additional discovery. Morton v. Hall, 599 F.3d 942, 945

(9th Cir. 2010).

III. Discussion

“Where, as here, there is no applicable federal statute

governing personal jurisdiction, the district court applies the

law of the state in which the district court sits.” 

Schwarzenegger, 374 F.3d at 800 (citing Fed. R. Civ. P.

4(k)(1)(A)). “California’s long-arm statute, Cal. Civ. Proc.

Code § 410.10, is coextensive with federal due process

requirements, so the jurisdictional analyses under state law

and federal due process are the same.” Mavrix Photo, Inc. v.

Brand Techs., Inc., 647 F.3d 1218, 1223 (9th Cir. 2011). The

district court held it could not exercise personal jurisdiction

over ATR consistent with federal due process. We agree.

A. Personal Jurisdiction Over ATR

It is well established that the Fourteenth Amendment’s

Due Process Clause limits the power of a state’s courts to

exercise jurisdiction over defendants who do not consent to

jurisdiction. Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v.

Brown, 131 S. Ct. 2846, 2850 (2011). There are two kinds of

personal jurisdiction that a state’s courts mayexercise over an

out-of-state defendant. Id. at 2851. The first, known as

“specific jurisdiction,” exists when a case “aris[es] out of or

relate[s] to the defendant’s contacts with the forum.” 

Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S.

408, 414 n.8 (1984); see Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at 755

(observing that “specific jurisdiction has become the

centerpiece of modern jurisdiction theory” (quoting

Goodyear, 131 S. Ct. at 2854) (internal quotation marks

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8 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

omitted)). The second, known as “general jurisdiction,”

allows “a defendant to be haled into court in the forum state

to answer for any of its activities anywhere in the world.” 

Schwarzenegger, 374 F.3d at 801. General jurisdiction over

a corporation is appropriate only when the corporation’s

contacts with the forum state “are so constant and pervasive

as to render it essentially at home” in the state. Daimler,

134 S. Ct. at 751 (quoting Goodyear, 131 S. Ct. at 2851)

(internal quotation marks and alteration omitted).

Although the terms “specific” and “general” jurisdiction

were not adopted by the Supreme Court until fairly recently,

these two kinds of personal jurisdiction can be traced back to

the Court’s decision in International Shoe Co. v. Washington,

326 U.S. 310 (1945). International Shoe reconceptualized

the Court’s earlier approach to personal jurisdiction, most

famously described in Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1878),

which generally limited a court’s jurisdiction to “the

geographic bounds of the forum.” Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at 753. 

“[S]purred by ‘changes in the technology of transportation

and communication, and the tremendous growth of interstate

business activity,’” the Court in International Shoe developed

a new concept of contacts-based jurisdiction as a flexible and

context-specific alternative to Pennoyer’s focus on a

defendant’s physical presence within the forum. Id. at 753

(quoting Burnham, 495 U.S. at 617 (opinion of Scalia, J.));

see also Burnham, 495 U.S. at 619 (observing that

International Shoe developed its approach “by analogy to

‘physical presence’” (emphasis omitted)).

International Shoe’s contacts-based approach to personal

jurisdiction supplemented Pennoyer’s approach but did not

entirely supplant it. In Burnham, the Court held that

Pennoyer’s category of “jurisdiction based on physical

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 9

presence alone” survived International Shoe as an

independent basis for personal jurisdiction, at least for natural

persons. Burnham, 495 U.S. at 619. The defendant in

Burnham was a New Jersey resident personally served with

a divorce petition while visiting his children in California. 

No part of the divorce proceedings arose out of the

defendant’s California contacts. See id. at 608. The Court

nevertheless held that California’s courts could exercise

general personal jurisdiction over the defendant. The Court

reaffirmed the historical rule that “personal service upon a

physically present defendant suffice[s] to confer jurisdiction,

without regard to whether the defendant was only briefly in

the State or whether the cause of action was related to his

activities there.” Id. at 612. This kind of jurisdiction is often

known as “tag jurisdiction.”

Relying on Burnham, plaintiffs argue that in-state service

of process on a corporate officer who is acting on behalf of

the corporation at the time of service creates tag jurisdiction

over the corporation. That is, they contend that their service

on ATR’s vice president of marketing while he was in

California gave the district court general personal jurisdiction

over ATR. We disagree.

Burnham was a split decision, with no opinion receiving

the support of a majority of the Court. Justice Scalia, in a

plurality opinion joined in full byChief Justice Rehnquist and

Justice Kennedy and in part by Justice White, concluded that

tag jurisdiction satisfied due process because it accorded with

the “firmly established” historical principle that “the courts

of a State have jurisdiction over nonresidents who are

physically present in the State.” Id. at 610. Justice Brennan,

joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun, and O’Connor, did

not approve tag jurisdiction based on its historical pedigree. 

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Rather, he believed that it should be tested against

“contemporary notions of due process.” Id. at 630 (Brennan,

J., concurring in the judgment). Under this test, Justice

Brennan concluded that “as a rule” tag jurisdiction satisfies

due process. Id. at 639. Justices White and Stevens

concurred separately in terse, somewhat enigmatic opinions. 

Id. at 628 (White, J., concurring in part and concurring in the

judgment); id. at 640 (Stevens, J., concurring in the

judgment).

None of the various opinions in Burnham discussed tag

jurisdiction with respect to artificial persons. Physical

presence is a simple concept for natural persons, who are

present in a single, ascertainable place. This is not so for

corporations, which can only act through their agents and can

do so in many places simultaneously. See Int’l Shoe,

326 U.S. at 316–17. Natural persons can be present in a state

both physically and through their contacts with the state. 

Corporations, on the other hand, can be present only through

their contacts:

Since the corporate personality is a fiction . . .

it is clear that unlike an individual its

‘presence’ . . . can be manifested only by

activities carried on in its behalf by those who

are authorized to act for it. . . . [T]he terms

‘present’ or ‘presence’ are used merely to

symbolize those activities of the corporation’s

agent within the state which courts will deem

to be sufficient to satisfy the demands of due

process. Those demands may be met by such

contacts of the corporation with the state of

the forum as make it reasonable . . . to require

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 11

the corporation to defend the particular suit

which is brought there.

Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 316–17 (citations omitted). As a

result, corporations “have never fitted comfortably in a

jurisdictional regime based primarily upon ‘de facto power

over the defendant’s person.’” Burnham, 495 U.S. at 610 n.1

(opinion of Scalia, J.) (quoting Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 316).

An officer of a corporation is not the corporation, even

when the officer acts on the corporation’s behalf. See

1 William Meade Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of

Corporations § 25 (Supp. 2011) (“The corporation and its

directors and officers are . . . not the same personality.”); id.

§ 30 (“A corporation is a distinct legal entity that can act only

through its agents.”). While a corporation may in some

abstract sense be “present” wherever its officers do business,

such presence is not physical in the way contemplated by

Burnham. See Burnham, 495 U.S. at 617–19 (distinguishing

the physical presence required for tag jurisdiction from the

“purelyfictional” concept of constructive “presence” through

business contacts).

On the assumption that tag jurisdiction exists only over

natural persons who are physically present in a forum state,

International Shoe indicates that a corporation maybe subject

to personal jurisdiction only when its contacts with the forum

support either specific or general jurisdiction. In the almost

seventy years since International Shoe, the Supreme Court

has never suggested anything else. See Goodyear, 131 S. Ct.

at 2853 (noting that “International Shoe classified cases

involving out-of-state corporate defendants” into two

categories: specific and general jurisdiction). To the

contrary, the Court has required an analysis of a corporation’s

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12 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

contacts with the forum state even when tag jurisdiction, if

available, would have made such analysis unnecessary.

In Perkins v. Benguet Consolidated Mining Co., 342 U.S.

437, 447–48 (1952), the Court held that Ohio could exercise

general jurisdiction over a Philippines company that, during

World War II, directed the bulk of its operations from Ohio. 

See Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at 755–56 (summarizing Perkins). 

The plaintiffs personally served the company’s president in

Ohio. Perkins, 342 U.S. at 439–40. If tag jurisdiction had

been available, that alone would have resolved the case. But

the Court upheld jurisdiction only after deciding whether “the

business done in Ohio . . . was sufficiently substantial” to

allow jurisdiction over claims unrelated to the company’s

Ohio contacts. Id. at 447. Cases decided after Burnham have

consistently understood Perkins as relying on the extent of

the company’s contacts with Ohio, not on the in-state service

on the company’s president. See, e.g., Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at

755, 756 n.8 (describing Perkins as “the textbook case of

general jurisdiction” and identifying “the point on which

[Perkins] turned: All of [the company’s] activities were

directed by the company’s president from within Ohio”).

Nor has our court ever indicated that Burnham applies to

corporations. In Chan v. Society Expeditions, Inc., 39 F.3d

1398 (9th Cir. 1994), the plaintiffs were injured while

traveling on a cruise ship. They sued the ship’s operator, a

German corporation, in federal district court in Washington

State. Id. at 1401–02. They personally served the

corporation’s president and sole owner in Washington. We

held that service was effective under the Federal Rules of

Civil Procedure. Id. at 1404. In response to the defendant’s

argument that Burnham did not authorize service, we

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 13

distinguished between the effectiveness of service and the

exercise of personal jurisdiction. We wrote:

[The defendant] argues that the rule allowing

transient or “tag” jurisdiction was never

adopted in the context of a corporation. . . . 

While it is true that a corporate defendant

does not submit to jurisdiction by one of its

officers voluntarily entering a state, this

situation is not what is at issue here. We hold

only that service of process . . . is effective in

this instance, not that plaintiffs generally can

acquire personal jurisdiction over corporate

defendants byserving the persons who happen

to own the corporation.

Id. at 1404 n.8 (citation omitted). We then remanded to the

district court to determine whether the corporation’s contacts

with Washington were sufficient to authorize personal

jurisdiction. Id. at 1404–06. Remand would have been

unnecessary had tag jurisdiction existed over the corporation. 

See also King v. Am. Family Mut. Ins. Co., 632 F.3d 570, 579

(9th Cir. 2011) (holding that a corporation’s designation of an

agent for in-state service of process does not create general

jurisdiction over the corporation); Wenche Siemer v. Learjet

Acquisition Corp., 966 F.2d 179, 182–83 (5th Cir. 1992)

(holding that Burnham did not authorize tag jurisdiction

based on in-state service on a corporation’s registered agent).

Of the other federal courts of appeals, only two have

reached decisions arguably contrary to ours. In Northern

Light Technology, Inc. v. Northern Lights Club, 236 F.3d 57

(1st Cir. 2001), the First Circuit stated in a footnote that

service on a corporation’s president conferred general

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14 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

personal jurisdiction over the corporation. Id. at 63 n.10. 

The court did not explain its decision or cite any supporting

cases. Id. In First American Corp. v. Price Waterhouse LLP,

154 F.3d 16 (2d Cir. 1998), the Second Circuit allowed

general jurisdiction over a partnership based on in-state

service on one of its partners. Id. at 19–21. We need not

decide here whether we agree with the court’s holding in

First American, for partnerships differ from corporations in

the important respect that “a partnership (unlike a

corporation) has no separate existence” from its partners. Id.

at 19.

In sum, personal jurisdiction exists over ATR only if

ATR’s contacts with California support either specific or

general jurisdiction. Plaintiffs do not argue that specific

jurisdiction exists over ATR, given that no part of their

lawsuit “aris[es] out of or relate[s] to” ATR’s contacts with

California. Helicopteros, 466 U.S. at 414 n.8. Instead, as an

alternative to tag jurisdiction, plaintiffs argue that ATR’s

contacts with California are so extensive that they create

general jurisdiction. Plaintiffs rely on five sets of contacts:

(1) ATR’s contracts, “worth between $225 and $450 million,”

to sell airplanes to Air Lease Corp., a California corporation;

(2) ATR’s contracts with eleven California component

suppliers; (3) ATR’s sending of representatives to California

to attend industry conferences, promote ATR products, and

meet with suppliers; (4) Empire Airlines’ use of ATR

airplanes in its California route; and (5) ATR’s advertising in

trade publications with distribution in California. These

contacts are plainly insufficient to subject ATR to general

jurisdiction in California.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Daimler makes

clear the demanding nature of the standard for general

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MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN 15

personal jurisdiction over a corporation. In Daimler, the

Court held that DaimlerChrysler Aktiengesellschaft

(“Daimler”), a German corporation, was not subject to

general jurisdiction in California based on the California

contacts of its subsidiary,Mercedes–Benz USA (“MBUSA”). 

Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at 750–51. MBUSA, a Delaware

corporation, is Daimler’s exclusive importer and distributor

for the United States. Its principal place of business is in

New Jersey, but it has multiple facilities in California and is

“the largest supplier of luxury vehicles to the California

market. . . . MBUSA’s California sales account for 2.4% of

Daimler’s worldwide sales.” Id. at 752. The Court assumed

that MBUSA would be subject to general jurisdiction in

California and that MBUSA’s California contacts could be

imputed to Daimler, but it still held that Daimler’s contacts

with California were not “so constant and pervasive as to

render [it] essentially at home” in California. Id. at 751

(internal quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original).

The Court in Daimler rejected the plaintiffs’ argument,

also pressed by plaintiffs here, that general jurisdiction is

appropriate whenever a corporation “engages in a substantial,

continuous, and systematic course of business” in a state. Id.

at 761 (internal quotation marks omitted). It emphasized that

the “paradigm” fora for general jurisdiction are a

corporation’s place of incorporation and principal place of

business. Id. at 760 (internal quotation marks omitted). Only

in an “exceptional case” will general jurisdiction be available

anywhere else. Id. at 761 n.19.

This is not such an exceptional case. ATR is organized

and has its principal place of business in France. It has no

offices, staff, or other physical presence in California, and it

is not licensed to do business in the state. See Mavrix Photo,

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16 MARTINEZ V. AERO CARIBBEAN

647 F.3d at 1225. Its California contacts are minor compared

to its other worldwide contacts. See Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at

762 n.20 (“General jurisdiction . . . calls for an appraisal of a

corporation’s activities in their entirety, nationwide and

worldwide. A corporation that operates in many places can

scarcely be deemed at home in all of them.”).

B. Plaintiffs’ Request for Additional Discovery

The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying

plaintiffs’ request for additional jurisdictional discovery

about ATR North America. It is apparent that nothing

plaintiffs could discover about ATR North America’s

contacts with California would make ATR “essentially at

home” in California. See id. at 760–62. “[A] refusal [to grant

discovery] is not an abuse of discretion when it is clear that

further discovery would not demonstrate facts sufficient to

constitute a basis for jurisdiction.” Wells Fargo & Co. v.

Wells Fargo Express Co., 556 F.2d 406, 430 n.24 (9th Cir.

1977).

Conclusion

We hold that ATR is not subject to personal jurisdiction

in California. Burnham does not authorize tag jurisdiction

over corporations, and ATR’s contacts with California are

insufficient to support general jurisdiction. Additional

jurisdictional discovery would be futile. We affirm the

district court’s dismissal of plaintiffs’ claims against ATR for

lack of personal jurisdiction.

AFFIRMED.

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