Opinion ID: 2403365
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 19

Heading: Denial of Lonny Bowers' motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction

Text: Lonny Bowers argues that the district court could not legally exercise personal jurisdiction over him. Aplt. Br. at 47 (capitalization in original omitted). Although he does not specifically say so, Lonny Bowers clearly appears to be challenging the district court's denial of his motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. On October 10, 2007, Lonny Bowers filed a motion to dismiss ClearOne's Third Amended Complaint on the grounds that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over him. In support, Lonny Bowers argued that he was a longtime Connecticut resident who had never resided in Utah, had never maintained any business office or business license in Utah, and owned no property and paid no taxes in Utah. Lonny Bowers further argued that he had only visited Utah on four occasions, two of which were in his capacity as a corporate representative of WideBand to conduct business with a customer, Harman. The other two occasions, Bower asserted, were to attend hearings in this lawsuit as a corporate representative of WideBand. On November 27, 2007, the district court held a hearing on Lonny Bowers' motion, at the conclusion of which it denied the motion, concluding that Lonny Bowers is here [in Utah] and would be here under the Utah long-arm statute for conducting business and for directing tortious conduct toward Utah. JA at T635-36. We review de novo a district court's order denying a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. See Benton v. Cameco Corp., 375 F.3d 1070, 1074 (10th Cir.2004). Where the district court considers a pre-trial motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction without conducting an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff need only make a prima facie showing of personal jurisdiction to defeat the motion. AST Sports Sci., Inc. v. CLF Distrib. Ltd., 514 F.3d 1054, 1056-57 (10th Cir.2008). To obtain personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant in a diversity action, a plaintiff must show that jurisdiction is legitimate under the laws of the forum state and that the exercise of jurisdiction does not offend the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Emp'rs Mut. Cas. Co. v. Bartile Roofs, Inc., 618 F.3d 1153, 1159 (10th Cir.2010). Utah's long-arm statute authorizes jurisdiction to the full extent of the federal constitution. Id.; see Utah Code Ann. § 78B-3-201(3); see also Starways, Inc. v. Curry, 980 P.2d 204, 206 (Utah 1999) (stating that the Utah long-arm statute must be extended to the fullest extent allowed by due process of law). Consequently, the panel need not conduct a statutory analysis apart from the due process analysis. Emp'rs Mut. Cas., 618 F.3d at 1159. The due process analysis consists of two steps. Id. First, we consider whether the defendant has such minimum contacts with the forum state that he should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). This minimum-contacts standard may be satisfied by showing general or specific jurisdiction. Id. Second, if the defendant has the minimum contacts with the forum state, we determine whether the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the defendant offends traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). This analysis is fact specific. Id. Here, the facts presented to the district court at the time of its ruling on Lonny Bowers' motion to dismiss established that it had specific, but not general, jurisdiction over Lonny Bowers. Although Lonny Bowers did not have continuous and systematic general business contacts with the state of Utah, Trujillo v. Williams, 465 F.3d 1210, 1218 n. 7 (10th Cir.2006) (discussing general jurisdiction), he admittedly traveled to Utah on two occasions as a representative of WideBand, including on one occasion to license WideBand's AEC technology to Harman, a Utah-based company. In addition to his personal visits to Utah, Lonny Bowers also exchanged numerous e-mails and had other communications with Harman in Utah in the process of negotiating and executing a licensing deal. Lastly, ClearOne presented evidence indicating that Lonny Bowers' actions, including entering into the licensing agreement with Harman, caused injuries to ClearOne in Utah. For these reasons, we conclude that Lonny Bowers purposefully availed [himself] of the privilege of conducting activities or consummating a transaction in Utah, and that by doing so, he caused injuries to ClearOne that became one of the subjects of this litigation. Emp'rs Mut. Cas., 618 F.3d at 1160 (discussing requirements for specific jurisdiction). Accordingly, we in turn conclude Lonny Bowers had sufficient minimum contacts with the state of Utah to reasonably have expected to be haled into court there in connection with his WideBand-related activities. Lonny Bowers contends, citing Ten Mile Industrial Park v. Western Plains Service Corp., 810 F.2d 1518, 1527 (10th Cir.1987), that these contacts are not sufficient to bring him within the personal jurisdiction of the district court because they were all committed in his capacity as a representative of WideBand, Dist. Ct. Docket No. 517, at 5, and thus the corporate shield doctrine ... prevents [him] from personally being hauled into Utah, id. at 6. Lonny Bowers, however, misconstrues both Ten Mile and the corporate shield doctrine. As this court recently explained in Rusakiewicz v. Lowe, 556 F.3d 1095, 1102 (10th Cir.2009),  Ten Mile held that the [district] court [in that case] lacked jurisdiction over an `executive committee' of a corporation for the contacts made by the corporation, based on [t]he rationale ... that an officer in a corporation is not personally liable for all the acts of the corporation.... In other words, an officer of a corporation is `not personally liable for torts of the corporation or of its other officers and agents merely by virtue of holding corporate office, but can only incur personal liability by participating in the wrongful activity.' Rusakiewicz, at 1103 (quoting Armed Forces Ins. Exch. v. Harrison, 70 P.3d 35, 41 (Utah 2003)). In the instant case, the record firmly establishes that Lonny Bowers participated in the wrongful activity, and thus the corporate shield doctrine has no applicability to him. The remaining question is whether the district court's exercise of personal jurisdiction over Lonny Bowers would offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. Lonny Bowers bears the burden of presenting a compelling case that the presence of some other considerations would render jurisdiction unreasonable. Emp'rs Mut. Cas., 618 F.3d at 1161 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). This reasonableness analysis requires the weighing of five factors: (1) the burden on the defendant, (2) the forum state's interest in resolving the dispute, (3) the plaintiff's interest in receiving convenient and effective relief, (4) the interstate judicial system's interest in obtaining the most efficient resolution of controversies, and (5) the shared interest of the several states in furthering fundamental social policies. Id. (citing Pro Axess, Inc. v. Orlux Distrib., Inc., 428 F.3d 1270, 1279-80 (10th Cir.2005)). Notably, Lonny Bowers made no attempt in his motion to dismiss to discuss any of these five factors, nor does he on appeal. Necessarily, then, he failed to carry his burden of presenting a compelling case that the district court's exercise of personal jurisdiction over him would be unreasonable. And, even ignoring Lonny Bowers' failure, we conclude that the district court's exercise of jurisdiction over him was, in fact, reasonable. To begin with, there is no indication that litigating the case in Utah was substantially more burdensome for Lonny Bowers than litigating it elsewhere. Indeed, Lonny Bowers, as a shareholder and officer of WideBand, was already involved in this litigation, and there was no assertion that the district court's exercise of jurisdiction over WideBand was improper. Second, Utah has a reasonable, if not substantial, interest in the resolution of this dispute, given that ClearOne is a Utah-based corporation. See id. at 1162-63. Third, Utah was undoubtedly one of the most efficient locations for the dispute to have been resolved, given the district court's conclusion that the UUTSA governed ClearOne's misappropriation of trade secrets claims, as well as the fact that ClearOne's key witnesses all haled from Utah. Lastly, the exercise of jurisdiction over Lonny Bowers in Utah did not affect[] the substantive social policy interests of other states, in pertinent part because no other state's laws apply to ClearOne's claims against the WideBand defendants. Id. at 1164. Thus, in sum, we conclude the district court properly denied Lonny Bowers' motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.