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

Heading: Sliding Scale Relationship

Text: Attempting to moderate the seemingly categorical effects of the but-for and substantive-relevance tests, some commentators have espoused, and a few courts have adopted, a sliding scale approach that examines the relationship between forum contacts and the litigation along a continuum. Under this view, as the extent of forum contacts goes up, the degree of relatedness to the litigation necessary to establish specific jurisdiction goes down, and vice versa. Maloney, supra at 1299-1300. As articulated by the Supreme Court of California, as the relationship of the defendant with the state seeking to exercise jurisdiction over him grows more tenuous, the scope of jurisdiction also retracts, and fairness is assured by limiting the circumstances under which the plaintiff can compel him to appear and defend. Vons Cos. v. Seabest Foods, Inc., 14 Cal.4th 434, 58 Cal.Rptr.2d 899, 926 P.2d 1085, 1094 (1996); see also Davis v. Baylor Univ., 976 S.W.2d 5, 9 (Mo.Ct.App.1998); William M. Richman, Jurisdiction in Civil Actions, 72 CAL. L.REV. 1328, 1338-40 (1984) (review essay). Although the sliding scale jurisdictional analysis studiously avoids the extremes that the other two relatedness tests present, it too presents a number of problems. Most significantly, deciding jurisdiction based on a sliding continuum blurs the distinction between general and specific jurisdiction that our judicial system has firmly embraced and that provides an established structure for courts to analyze questions of in personam jurisdiction. See Maloney, supra at 1299-1300. Removing the jurisdictional analysis from these judicial underpinnings allows general and specific jurisdiction to melt together in the middle . . . severely weaken[ing] the defendant's ability to anticipate the jurisdictional consequences of its conduct. Linda Sandstrom Simard, Meeting Expectations: Two Profiles for Specific Jurisdiction, 38 IND. L.REV. 343, 366 (2005). In sum, this tradeoff does not fulfill the underlying goals of either general or specific jurisdiction and may raise far more difficult questions than it resolves. Id. at 366-67. For these reasons, we decline to adopt the sliding-scale approach to relatedness.