Opinion ID: 1034091
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Conspiracy Question

Text: Purposeful direction analyses traditionally tend to focus on a defendant’s contacts such as travels to the forum, communications with forum residents, the course of business dealings with forum residents, and so forth. Newsome, however, does not attempt to establish such traditional contacts between these defendants and the State of Oklahoma. Newsome instead accuses the individual defendants of conspiring to maximize their personal gain at Mahalo USA’s expense, arguing that personal jurisdiction can be obtained over all of them through the conspiracy. 2 As authority for this proposition, Newsome cites Melea, Ltd. v. Jawer SA, where we stated that “[t]he existence of a conspiracy and [overt] acts of a co-conspirator within the forum may, in some cases, subject another co-conspirator to the forum’s jurisdiction.” 511 F.3d 1060, 1069 (10th Cir. 2007). But Melea, by its terms, requires at least one of the conspirators to have pursued the conspiracy within the forum state. Cf. id. at 1070 (“a coconspirator’s presence within the forum might reasonably create the ‘minimum 2 The district court struck some of the evidence Newsome submitted in support of personal jurisdiction, and Newsome challenges that ruling here. But if the district court committed error (which we do not decide), then it was harmless. As to evidence concerning the individual defendants, the district court may have struck Newsome’s supporting materials but it took Newsome’s assertions at face value—indeed, it reprinted them verbatim. See App. 1775–76. The district court did not do likewise with the evidence concerning the law firm, but having reviewed that evidence ourselves, we conclude the district court nonetheless reached the right result in dismissing the firm. See infra Part II.C. -10- contacts’ with the forum necessary to exercise jurisdiction over another coconspirator if the conspiracy is directed towards the forum, or substantial steps in furtherance of the conspiracy are taken in the forum”). Newsome makes no such allegation against any of the individual defendants. Melea therefore does not help us here. This case, instead, presents an unusual situation: a conspiracy that takes place entirely outside of the forum, but with the conspirators’ knowledge that the forum would bear the brunt of the conspiracy’s harmful effects. Outside of the conspiracy context, this sort of situation would pose no doctrinal problem. In Calder v. Jones, for instance, the Supreme Court permitted California to exercise jurisdiction over parties—in that case a newspaper editor and a reporter—acting entirely from Florida to cause injuries in California. 465 U.S. 783, 789–91 (1984). The question is whether the result should be different if a conspiracy is involved. We recognize parties could potentially stretch the conspiracy cause of action to subvert the due process principles that govern personal jurisdiction. See generally Ann Althouse, The Use of Conspiracy Theory to Establish In Personam Jurisdiction: A Due Process Analysis, 52 Fordham L. Rev. 234 (1983). We also acknowledge that personal jurisdiction requirements “must be met as to each defendant.” Rush v. Savchuk, 444 U.S. 320, 332 (1980). But we cannot dismiss out of hand the jurisdictional theory Newsome presents. If three Kansans -11- conspired to fire a cannonball into Oklahoma, we do not believe the Constitution would foreclose Oklahoma courts from exercising jurisdiction over the conspirators simply because they confined themselves to Kansas. Nonetheless, we need not decide the precise standard to apply to this circumstance. Newsome treats the individual defendants as identical in all material respects. As he alleges, all reside in Alberta, all knew that Mahalo USA operated exclusively in Oklahoma, all had a fiduciary duty to Mahalo USA or aided and abetted someone who did, and all collectively took intentional actions that caused breaches of fiduciary duties owed to Mahalo USA. If true, there is no theoretical problem with analyzing these allegations as applying to them both individually and as a group. Defendants counter by asserting generically that they should not be treated as a group, but their only specific argument in that regard is that the law firm differs from the group as a whole. We agree and will analyze the law firm separately. See infra Part II.C. But defendants do not explain why any other defendant differs from the group for personal jurisdiction purposes. Accordingly, we accept Newsome’s contention that the individual defendants are materially identical for personal jurisdiction purposes. -12-