Opinion ID: 3050320
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: jurisdiction and service of process

Text: In personam jurisdiction, simply stated, is the power of a court to enter judgment against a person. In rem jurisdiction is the court’s power over property. Before a court may exercise the state’s coercive authority over a person or property, some statute must authorize the act. Sec. Investor Prot. Corp. v. Vigman, 764 F.2d 1309, 1313-14 (9th Cir. 1985). For state courts, generally a state long-arm statute supplies all the authority that state courts require. By contrast, there is no general federal long-arm statute, so federal courts must look either to the long-arm statutes of the state in which the court sits, FED. R. CIV. P. 4(k)(1)(A), or to specific federal statutes, FED. R. CIV. P. 4(k)(1)(B), (C), (D) to authorize the exercise of jurisdiction. Since Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 733-34 (1877), the courts’ ability to exercise personal jurisdiction has been constrained by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The requirement that a court have personal jurisdiction “represents a restriction on judicial power not as a matter of sovereignty, but as a matter of indiSEC v. ROSS 13919 vidual liberty.” Ins. Corp. of Ireland, Ltd v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 702 (1982). We have stated that “a court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant consistent with due process only if he or she has ‘certain minimum contacts’ with the relevant forum ‘such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’ ” Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et L’Antisemitisme, 433 F.3d 1199, 1205 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc) (quoting Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457, 463 (1940))). We have set forth a three-part test, derived from the Due Process Clause, that examines the defendant’s purposeful conduct towards the forum, the relation between his conduct and the cause of action asserted against him, and the reasonableness of the exercise of jurisdiction. See id. at 1205-06; Schwarzenegger v. Fred Martin Motor Co., 374 F.3d 797, 802 (9th Cir. 2004); Bancroft & Masters, Inc. v. Augusta Nat’l Inc., 223 F.3d 1082, 1086 (9th Cir. 2000). The familiar “minimum contacts” test, coupled with statutory authorization, provides a basis for an exercise of jurisdiction, but “[s]ervice of process is the mechanism by which the court [actually] acquires” the power to enforce a judgment against the defendant’s person or property. United States v. 2,164 Watches, More or Less Bearing a Registered Trademark of Guess?, Inc., 366 F.3d 767, 771 (9th Cir. 2004) (emphasis added). In other words, service of process is the means by which a court asserts its jurisdiction over the person. See Benny v. Pipes, 799 F.2d 489, 492 (9th Cir. 1986) (“A federal court is without personal jurisdiction over a defendant unless the defendant has been served in accordance with FED. R. CIV. P. 4.”); FED. R. CIV. P. 4(k) (stating that “[s]ervice of a summons or filing a waiver of service is effective to establish jurisdiction over the person of a defendant”). Service of process has its own due process component, and must be “notice reasonably calculated . . . to apprise interested 13920 SEC v. ROSS parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections.” Mullane v. Cent. Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314 (1950). Without a proper basis for jurisdiction, or in the absence of proper service of process, the district court has no power to render any judgment against the defendant’s person or property unless the defendant has consented to jurisdiction or waived the lack of process. See Mason v. Genisco Tech. Corp., 960 F.2d 849, 851 (9th Cir. 1992); see also Omni Capital Int’l v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 484 U.S. 97, 104 (1987) (“[B]efore a court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant, there must be more than notice to the defendant and a constitutionally sufficient relationship between the defendant and the forum. There also must be a basis for the defendant’s amenability to service of summons. Absent consent, this means there must be authorization for service of summons on the defendant.”). A judgment entered without jurisdiction over the defendant is void. With these principles in mind, we turn to the bases for jurisdiction asserted by the Receiver.