Opinion ID: 2328476
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: The trial court ruled that it had jurisdiction over AKA, but dismissed as to the individual appellees and the Foundation for lack of jurisdiction. The trial court's dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction is reviewed de novo, but plaintiffs bear the burden of establishing personal jurisdiction over each defendant. See Holder v. Haarmann & Reimer Corp., 779 A.2d 264, 269 (D.C.2001). None of the individual appellees is a resident of the District of Columbia and the Foundation is a foreign corporation. Jurisdiction over them depends upon the application of the District's Long Arm Statute and, more particularly, the provision that the District's courts may exercise personal jurisdiction over a person, who acts directly or by an agent, as to a claim for relief arising from the person's [] transacting any business in the District of Columbia. D.C.Code § 13-423(a) (2001). When jurisdiction rests on this provision, only a claim for relief arising from acts enumerated in this section may be asserted against [the defendant]. D.C.Code § 13-423(b) (2001). As we have repeatedly reaffirmed and need not rehearse at length here, the breadth of the transacting business provision is coextensive with the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. In other words, the defendant must have minimum contacts with the forum so that exercising personal jurisdiction over it would not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. Hence the defendant must have purposefully directed [its] activities at residents of the forum. This means that the non-resident defendant's conduct and connection with the forum state are such that he should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there. Gonzalez v. Internacional de Elevadores, S.A., 891 A.2d 227, 234 (D.C.2006) (alterations in original) (quotation marks and citations omitted). [U]nder the due process clause, the minimum contacts principle requires us to examine the quality and nature of the nonresident defendant's contacts with the District and whether those contacts are voluntary and deliberate or only random, fortuitous, tenuous and accidental. Shoppers Food Warehouse v. Moreno, 746 A.2d 320, 329 (D.C.2000) (en banc). The allegations in the case before us focus in large part on wrongdoing with respect to the 2008 meeting of the Boule, that is, the failure to obtain the alleged requisite Boule approval for the challenged expenditures and the suppression of any discussion of these expenditures at the Boule meetings. The Boule sessions were held in the District of Columbia over the course of a full week. They dealt with the management of a District of Columbia corporation, the entity to which the Boule actions were directed. It appears that all of the named appellees voluntarily participated in the Boule sessions or the actions relating thereto. In these circumstances, the participants could reasonably anticipate being required to defend their actions in the courts of the District without offending traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. And [o]nce . . . the claim is related to acts in the District, § 13-423 does not require that the scope of the claim be limited to activity within this jurisdiction. Shoppers Food Warehouse, supra, 746 A.2d at 326 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Cohane v. Arpeja-California, Inc., 385 A.2d 153, 158-59 (D.C.1978)). The trial court erred in dismissing the action as to the individual appellees for want of jurisdiction. [3] Jurisdiction over the Foundation, however, is another matter. No acts of wrongdoing in the District are alleged against the Foundation. Rather, the appellants rely on the assertion of general jurisdiction under D.C.Code § 13-334(a), relating to corporations doing business in the District. The appellants' scanty assertions that the Foundation maintained a website, which was necessarily accessible to District residents, and received applications from and made grants to District residents, were hardly sufficient to establish general jurisdiction and the trial court correctly so ruled. Nor did the trial court abuse its discretion in denying the discovery motion as it related to the Foundation. See FC Inv. Grp. LC v. IFX Mkts., Ltd., 381 U.S.App.D.C. 383, 388-90, 529 F.3d 1087, 1093-94 (2008) (In order to engage in jurisdictional discovery, the plaintiff must have at least a good faith belief that such discovery will enable it to show that the court has personal jurisdiction over the defendant. Such a request for jurisdictional discovery cannot be based on mere conjecture or speculation. (quotation marks and citation omitted)).