Opinion ID: 3033442
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Implied Consent Through Waiver Of Personal

Text: Jurisdiction Obligation In Other Litigation The Companies’ other contention concerns the participation of 465 of the Nicaraguans (the Managuan defendants) in Dole Food Co. v. Gutierrez, a separate lawsuit. Dole Food Co. was a declaratory judgment action brought by a company that is not a plaintiff here, although the action concerns the same underlying Nicaraguan judgments. The Managuan defendants did not object to personal jurisdiction over them in the Dole action, but instead filed a dismissal motion under Fed. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim.5 The Companies argue that by failing to object to lack of personal jurisdiction in that suit, the Managuan defendants impliedly consented to personal jurisdiction in this action. We reject this argument as well. The Companies ask us to adopt, for the first time in this circuit, the holdings of two out-of-circuit decisions: General Contracting & Trading Co. v. Interpole, Inc., 940 F.2d 20 (1st Cir. 1991), and International Transactions Limited v. Embotelladora Agral Regionmontana S.A. de C.V., 277 F. Supp. 2d 654 (N.D. Tex. 2002), and suggest that those holdings would be determinative. We assume without deciding that this circuit would follow Interpole and Embotelladora, but conclude that the analysis contained in those cases does not aid the Companies. The procedural facts of Interpole and Embotelladora are similar. In Interpole, Interpole sued the Transamerican Steamship Corporation (“Trastco”) in a third-party complaint for indemnity. A default judgment issued against Trastco (Suit No. 1). Trastco later brought suit against Interpole in the same federal district court (Suit No. 2), charging fraud and misrep- 5 Although the district court assumed otherwise, the Managuan defendants state in their brief in this court that their submission to jurisdiction in Dole was deliberate, as they preferred to litigate on the merits in that appeal. 11568 THE DOW CHEMICAL CO. v. CALDERON resentation in connection with the same overall transaction involved in Suit No. 1. 940 F.2d at 21. The First Circuit held: Whatever label one might place on Trastco’s con- duct, it seems pellucidly clear that, by bringing Suit No. 2, Trastco submitted itself to the district court’s jurisdiction in Suit No. 1. Trastco elected to avail itself of the benefits of the New Hampshire courts as a plaintiff, starting a suit against Interpole. By so doing, we think it is inevitable that Trastco surrendered any jurisdictional objections to claims that Interpole wished to assert against it in consequence of the same transaction or arising out of the same nucleus of operative facts. Id. at 23 (footnote omitted). In Embotelladora, Sharp Capital, Inc., purchased a promissory note entered into by Agral, a Mexican corporation. 277 F. Supp. 2d at 658. Agral defaulted on the promissory note, and Sharp initiated arbitration proceedings. Id. In response, Agral filed two suits against Sharp in the Northern District of Texas. Id. at 659. When Sharp ultimately won an arbitration award of more than $11 million, Sharp’s assignee sued Agral to enforce payment of the Award. Id. Agral moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Id. Citing to Interpole, the Northern District of Texas determined that by filing a complaint against Sharp concerning the same transaction (the promissory note for the bottling plant), Agral affirmatively sought relief from the same court concerning the same transaction or occurrence they were defending against; the court therefore denied Agral’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Id. at 667-69. [9] Taken together, these two cases establish an affirmative relief rule, specifying that personal jurisdiction exists where a defendant also independently seeks affirmative relief in a separate action before the same court concerning the same THE DOW CHEMICAL CO. v. CALDERON 11569 transaction or occurrence. Such action “may take place prior to the suit’s institution, or at the time suit is brought, or after suit has started.” Interpole, 940 F.2d at 22 (internal citations omitted). [10] The Companies’ argument here is limited to addressing only consent-based jurisdiction; as noted, they expressly disavow any argument for personal jurisdiction on the basis of “minimum contacts” specific jurisdiction.6 Interpole, however, at least in part addresses specific jurisdiction, as it invokes the language pertinent to that doctrine. See 940 F.2d at 24 (“Upholding the forum court’s assumption of jurisdiction over Trastco in Suit No. 1 seems a small price to exact for allowing Trastco purposefully to avail itself of the benefits of a New Hampshire forum as a plaintiff in Suit No. 2.”). Similarly, Embotelladora uses a specific jurisdiction “minimum contacts” analysis; it does not speak at all of consentbased jurisdiction. See 277 F. Supp. 2d at 666-69. It thus appears to us that Interpole and Embotelladora rest primarily on the conclusion that there is nothing unfair, or violative of due process, about requiring a party that has affirmatively sought the aid of our courts with regard to a particular transaction to submit to jurisdiction in the same forum as a defendant with regard to the same transaction with the same party. [11] As noted, the Companies here have expressly eschewed any “minimum contacts” specific jurisdiction analysis, and rest only on the contention that the Managuan defendants have consented to suit. As for the contention that has 6 “Where a forum seeks to assert specific juridiction over an out-of-state defendant who has not consented to suit there,” due process is satisfied if the defendant has established “minimum contacts” with the forum such that (1) “the defendant has ‘purposefully directed’ his activities at residents of the forum,” (2) “the litigation results from alleged injuries that ‘arise out of or relate to’ those activities,” and (3) the exercise of jurisdiction is reasonable. See Burger King, 471 U.S. at 472, 477 (internal citations omitted); see also Bancroft & Masters, Inc. v. Augusta Nat’l, Inc., 223 F.3d 1082, 1086 (9th Cir. 2000). 11570 THE DOW CHEMICAL CO. v. CALDERON been raised — that the defense on the merits in the Dole action constituted consent by the Nicaraguans to the present action — we hold that defense on the merits in a suit brought by one party cannot constitute consent to suit as a defendant brought by different parties. As we have noted above, it is doubtful that a party could demonstrate consent solely through an Interpole/Embotelladora-like contact. Even if we were to conclude otherwise, however, we would not stretch those cases to cover this one. Interpole and Embotelladora rely upon the fact that the party objecting to jurisdiction (the Nicaraguans in this case) was also affirmatively availing itself of the relevant forum. See Interpole, 940 F.2d at 23; Embotelladora, 277 F. Supp. 2d at 668. Interpole, moreover, places emphasis on the phrase “as a plaintiff” in encapsulating its holding. 940 F.2d at 23. This requirement that the party defendant objecting to personal jurisdiction have acted affirmatively to seek the aid of courts in the relevant forum has been underscored in both of the later characterizations of Interpole by the First Circuit. See Martel v. Stafford, 992 F.2d 1244, 1248 (1st Cir. 1993) (characterizing Interpole as “ruling that a plaintiff who purposefully avails himself of a particular forum surrenders jurisdictional objections to claims arising out of the same transaction that are brought against him in the same forum” (emphasis added)); Precision Etchings & Findings, Inc. v. LGP Gem Ltd., 953 F.2d 21, 25 (1st Cir. 1992) (citing Interpole for the idea that “implied submission” to jurisdiction occurs when a party “bring[s] independent action” to “seek affirmative relief”). The two other circuits to address Interpole are in accord with this interpretation. See Rates Tech. Inc. v. Nortel Networks Corp., 399 F.3d 1302, 1308 n.5 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (noting the filing of suit as important to that ruling); PaineWebber Inc. v. Chase Manhattan Private Bank (Switzerland), 260 F.3d 453, 460 & n.8 (5th Cir. 2001) (describing Interpole as a case “in which the party seeking to avoid the court’s jurisdiction has chosen to commence the THE DOW CHEMICAL CO. v. CALDERON 11571 action or a related action in the very forum in which it is contesting personal jurisdiction” (emphasis added)). [12] Here, the Managuan defendants have only defended against two separate actions concerning a single foreign judgment in the same court. It is true that the Nicaraguans made a choice in the Dole action to defend on the merits. But that choice was made only after they were haled into the district court by Dole. Without an independent affirmative decision to seek relief in our courts, there can be no imputation of a conscious decision to settle all aspects of a dispute here. Moreover, this case does not implicate the “unjust asymmetry” that occurs with “allowing a party . . . to enjoy the full benefits of access to a state’s courts qua plaintiff, while nonetheless retaining immunity from the courts’ authority qua defendant in respect to claims asserted by the very party it was suing.” Interpole, 940 F.2d at 23. Here, we have multiple plaintiffs suing the same set of Nicaraguan defendants in separate suits. That the defendants won on the merits in one suit and won on a jurisdictional objection in the other is not the asymmetry that concerned the Interpole court. [13] We therefore hold that the Managuan group of 465 Nicaraguans did not consent to jurisdiction in this action by waiving their personal jurisdiction objection in the Dole declaratory judgment action.