Opinion ID: 1953018
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Possibility of prosecution of action in Maine

Text: Finally, the defendant argues that at the termination of his contract of employment the plaintiff could have maintained in the State of Maine an action for damages based in tort for negligence or under strict products-liability concepts, since the period of six years provided by the Maine statute of limitations applying to tort actions had not yet expired. This presupposes in turn that the Connecticut manufacturer of the coffee percolator was subject to judicial process under Maine's so-called long arm statute (14 M.R.S.A. § 704). This statute provides in pertinent part as follows: § 704. Persons subject to jurisdiction 1. Causes of action. Any person, whether or not a citizen or resident of this State, who in person or through an agent does any of the acts hereinafter enumerated in this section, thereby submits said person    to the jurisdiction of the courts of this State as to any cause of action arising from the doing of any of said acts:       B. The commission of a tortious act within the State resulting in physical injury to person or property;   . This Court construed the reference statute in Foye v. Consolidated Bailing Machine Company, 1967, Me., 229 A.2d 196. In that case the nonresident defendant, charged with knowledge of the defects and failure to warn, was the vendor of a paper press which the plaintiff in the complaint had alleged to be dangerous and defective. The defendant-vendor had purchased the machine from the manufacturer and sold it to a Massachusetts company but at the request of the Massachusetts concern had shipped the paper press directly to the plaintiff's employer in Maine. Foye received his injuries while the machine was operated in Maine. We there said at page 198: For jurisdictional purposes from the time the dangerous instrumentality set in motion by the defendant enters the State and while it proceeds within the State to the point of injurious contact with the plaintiff, the defendant may properly be deemed to be `acting' within the State. (Emphasis added.) In the instant case, we do not have the Foye situation where the nonresident defendant directly sent the dangerous instrumentality into the State of Maine. Rather, our present facts more nearly parallel those in Gray v. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp., 1961, 22 Ill.2d 432, 176 N.E.2d 761, except perhaps that Mrs. Sohn stands one step removed from the plaintiff consumer in Gray. Under the Gray reasoning, however, such difference would be immaterial, since the Court's rationale, based on the interpretation of the Illinois statute, was founded on the legislative meaning of the term tortious act as including as an inherent part of the whole tort the resulting injury. In Foye, we recognized the difference in wording between the Illinois statute and the Maine statute and by way of dictum we stated the additional language in our statute after the words [t]he commission of a tortious act within the State resulting in physical injury to person or property suggested rather clearly that the `tortious act' must be antecedent to and productive of the resulting injury, and would make it difficult for us to apply the reasoning relied upon in Gray. We concluded in Foye We go no farther than the facts of this case. We treat the defendant who makes the intentional direct shipment of the dangerous and injury producing product to the consumer as `acting' within the forum state. We neither intimate nor suggest what our holding would be where as in Gray the defendant has had no contact with this State prior to or apart from the resulting injury. The legislatively extended reach of state jurisdiction over the person of absent foreign corporations and other nonresidents, to pass constitutional muster of due process, must needs require certain minimal contacts with the forum state. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 1945, 326 U.S. 310, 66 S.Ct. 154, 90 L.Ed. 95; McGee v. International Life Insurance Co., 1957, 355 U.S. 220, 78 S.Ct. 199, 2 L.Ed.2d 223. We added in Foye, by way of cautionary advice in the interpretation of the minimal contacts requirement, the restrictive qualification of the rule made in Hanson v. Denckla, 1958, 357 U.S. 235, 253, 78 S.Ct. 1228, 1240, 2 L.Ed.2d 1283, which we cite again: The application of that rule will vary with the quality and nature of the defendant's activity, but it is essential in each case that there be some act by which the defendant purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State, thus invoking the benefits and protections of its laws. (Emphasis supplied.) However minimal the contacts may be to comply with due process requirements, we note in the wording of our long arm statute the personal-aspect characteristic of the tortious act or activity in Maine to which the Legislature has narrowly anchored the applicability of the statute. The commission of a tortious act within the State must be by the nonresident in person or through an agent. In Foye, we equated the nonresident's direct shipment of the dangerous instrumentality for delivery in Maine with the placing of that dangerous instrumentality in the hands of a citizen of this State and, upon subsequent resulting injury, with the personal commission of a tortious act within this State, at least within the broad interpretation which we have said should be given to the `long arm' statute. Furthermore, our statute provides that by doing in person or through an agent any of the enumerated acts, such as the commission of a tortious act within the State, the nonresident submits his person to the jurisdiction of the courts of the State of Maine. The statutory rationale presupposes a purposeful act or activity on the part of the nonresident upon which an inference may logically arise that the nonresident has submitted his person to the jurisdiction of this State. Something more than the mere happening of an injury within the forum state arising out of a defectively manufactured product of a nonresident must appear to permit the inference; the purposeful act within the State of Maine which our statute requires means at least that the nonresident actor has made himself causally responsible personally or by agent for the presence of the injuring product within the State. We rule that, before jurisdiction in personam can be obtained against a nonresident under our long arm statute by reason of a resulting injury in Maine from a dangerous instrumentality, it must appear the nonresident intentionally and actively participated in the act or activity that put the defective article in Maine. The bare assertion that the nonresident put its defective product into the stream of commerce, without more, is insufficient under our statute. See, O'Brien v. Comstock Foods, Inc., 1963, 123 Vt. 461, 194 A.2d 568. From the record in the instant case, there is no showing that Landers, Frary & Clark was in any way causally responsible for the presence of the defective coffee percolator in Maine. Nowhere does it appear that it intended this product for Maine, nor that it actively participated in the chain of transactions that set the product on its way to Maine. We neither intimate nor suggest what our ruling would be if this Connecticut manufacturer were shown to be servicing the Maine marketing area indirectly through distributors it knew would reach the Maine market. We confine our decision to the facts of this case and to the issues as the parties have presented the same. The entry will be Appeal sustained. MARDEN, J., sat at argument but retired before this opinion was adopted.