Opinion ID: 894827
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: But-For Relatedness

Text: In Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia v. Hall , the Supreme Court evaluated a Colombian corporation's limited contacts with Texas and decided they were not sufficiently continuous and systematic to support general jurisdiction over the defendant in Texas. 466 U.S. at 418-19, 104 S.Ct. 1868. The Court did not reach specific jurisdiction because the parties had conceded that the plaintiffs' claims did not arise from or relate to the defendant's activities in Texas. Id. at 415-16, 104 S.Ct. 1868. Justice Brennan, though, dissented, espousing a broad but-for approach to relatedness, and courts that have applied that test have generally relied on his view. Id. at 427-28, 104 S.Ct. 1868. Courts that support the but-for approach have said that a cause of action arises from or relates to a defendant's forum contacts when, but for those contacts, the cause of action would never have arisen. See Shute v. Carnival Cruise Lines, 897 F.2d 377, 385 (9th Cir.1990), rev'd on other grounds, 499 U.S. 585, 111 S.Ct. 1522, 113 L.Ed.2d 622 (1991); see also Prejean v. Sonatrach, Inc., 652 F.2d 1260, 1270 n. 21 (5th Cir.1981) (holding that a contract [was] a but for causative factor for the tort suit); cf. Lanier v. Am. Bd. of Endodontics, 843 F.2d 901, 909 (6th Cir.1988) (interpreting arising out of language in Michigan's long-arm statute and concluding that alleged discrimination would not have occurred but for the defendants' contacts with the forum). Rather than considering only isolated contacts that relate to a specific element of proof or the proximate cause of injury, the but-for analysis considers jurisdictional contacts that occur over the entire course of events of the relationship between the defendant, the forum, and the litigation. See Shute, 897 F.2d at 384. As the sole jurisdiction to explicitly adopt the but-for test, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been its staunchest advocate, and Shute's progeny have generally demonstrated the circuit's continuing support. Nowak, 94 F.3d at 714 (noting the Ninth Circuit as the most forceful defender of the `but for' test); see Ballard v. Savage, 65 F.3d 1495, 1500 (9th Cir.1995); Terracom v. Valley Nat'l Bank, 49 F.3d 555, 561 (9th Cir.1995); but see Omeluk v. Langsten Slip & Batbyggeri A/S, 52 F.3d 267, 271 (9th Cir.1995) (noting that [t]he authority of our decision in Shute is questionable). Applying the but-for test, the Shute court held that a passenger's personal injuries suffered aboard a cruise ship arose out of the nonresident cruise line's contacts with Washington because, but for the cruise line's advertisements there, the passenger would not have purchased a ticket and boarded the ship. Shute, 897 F.2d at 386. The cruise line advertised in local media and sent brochures to the state. Id. at 379. The court reasoned that, when a defendant demonstrates continuing efforts to solicit business in the forum state, whether a cause of action arises from those efforts must be viewed over the entire course of events. Id. at 385-86. The court did not limit its relatedness analysis to the passenger's reservation contract, but instead analyzed the range of the cruise line's solicitation activities. Id. at 385-86. The Fifth Circuit appeared to apply relatedness in a similarly expansive manner in Prejean, 652 F.2d at 1270. There, the spouses of passengers who died in a plane crash brought a wrongful-death action in Texas against, among others, an Algerian oil company that chartered the flight. Id. In reversing the trial court's dismissal for want of personal jurisdiction and remanding for further factual inquiry, the Fifth Circuit stated that, assuming the defendant had chartered the plane, the wrongful-death suit would arise from that charter because the charter contract would be a but-for causative factor for the tort of wrongful death. Id. Several justifications have been posited for the but-for approach. See Shute, 897 F.2d at 385. In Shute, the court explained that the but-for test preserves the specific-jurisdiction requirement that there be a nexus between the cause of action and the defendant's activities in the forum. Id. At the same time, the court opined, the expansive approach is more fundamentally fair because it does not allow a defendant to engage in significant purposeful activities in the forum yet still avoid jurisdiction when the relationship of the cause of action to those activities is tenuous. Id. at 385-86. On the other hand, the but-for approach has been widely criticized for the expanse of its seemingly unlimited jurisdictional reach: [a] `but for' requirement . . . has in itself no limiting principle; it literally embraces every event that hindsight can logically identify in the causative chain. Nowak, 94 F.3d at 715; see also Lea Brilmayer, Related Contacts and Personal Jurisdiction, 101 HARV. L.REV. 1444, 1462 (1988) (criticizing the but-for test for its limitless reach). Although the Shute court posited that the required reasonableness inquiry would act as a check on the but-for test's expansiveness, commentators have questioned the efficacy of the reasonableness safeguard, calling it highly deferential. See, e.g., Maloney, supra at 1298. Few courts beyond the Ninth Circuit have adopted the but-for approach to relatedness. Specifically, both the Fifth and Sixth Circuits have signaled a movement away from such a broad test. [3] We agree with those courts and commentators who view the but-for test as too broad and judicially unmoored to satisfy due-process concerns.