Opinion ID: 783938
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Jurisdiction and venue defenses

Text: 101 The district court sanctioned Cello for asserting lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue as defenses. Because these arguments were not properly raised on appeal, we did not reach them in our review of Cello's jurisdictional objections, but we believe that they are not frivolous. The district court premised its belief that no reasonable basis existed for these defenses on Cello's contacts with New York as a plaintiff in the First Action and on the facts underlying the first action. See Storey, 182 F.Supp.2d at 368. Whether a litigant's involvement as a plaintiff in a prior action, or the facts introduced in a prior action, can serve as the basis of personal jurisdiction over that litigant when he is a defendant in a subsequent action, in which the plaintiff's case relies on the res judicata effect of the prior action, is a novel issue. We need not resolve it at this time, however, because it is enough for our purposes here to say that the argument is at least non-frivolous.