Opinion ID: 197918
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: the eight individual defendants

Text: 25 When the district court applies the prima facie standard and grants a motion to dismiss for want of in personam jurisdiction without conducting an evidentiary hearing to resolve disputed jurisdictional facts, the court of appeals reviews its ruling de novo. See Foster-Miller, Inc. v. Babcock & Wilcox Canada, 46 F.3d 138, 147 (1st Cir.1995). The lower court's decision to dismiss MSL's action as to the Committee members--defendants Hasl, Moeser, Ryan, Schneider, Sowle, Walwer, and Yu--falls within this sphere. So does the order dismissing the action against the last of the Eight Individual Defendants, Henry Ramsey, Jr. (the chair of the Section). Withal, Ramsey's situation requires a more extended analysis. 26 The factual basis for MSL's jurisdictional initiative derives predominantly from three events that occurred in 1993. According to the complaint, Hasl, Moeser, Schneider, and Ramsey met in Boston on February 6. The quartet allegedly used false statements and charges--the nature of which is not disclosed--in order to try to bring their plan of non-accreditation of MSL to fruition. A review of the parties' proffers reveals, however, that the only MSL-related business transacted at this meeting involved a decision to delay the site visit by one month. MSL next alludes to a Committee meeting that took place on June 23 in Brooklyn, New York. The Eight Individual Defendants all attended this session and participated in the denial of MSL's application for accreditation. The Eight Individual Defendants, save Ramsey, also attended a retreat that took place on Nantucket Island, in Massachusetts, from June 24-27. MSL asserts conclusorily that the Committee finalized the denial of its application during this period, but the record flatly contradicts this assertion: the retreat participants all maintain (to quote from typical language appearing in their several affidavits) that [w]hile in Nantucket, the Committee did not take up any agenda item concerning MSL, as all matters concerning MSL had been concluded in Brooklyn, New York, on June 23, 1993. MSL proffers no clear evidence showing that these statements are inaccurate. 27 On a motion to dismiss for want of in personam jurisdiction, Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(2), the plaintiff ultimately bears the burden of persuading the court that jurisdiction exists. See McNutt v. General Motors Acceptance Corp., 298 U.S. 178, 189, 56 S.Ct. 780, 785, 80 L.Ed. 1135 (1936); Rodriguez v. Fullerton Tires Corp., 115 F.3d 81, 83 (1st Cir.1997). In conducting the requisite analysis under the prima facie standard, we take specific facts affirmatively alleged by the plaintiff as true (whether or not disputed) and construe them in the light most congenial to the plaintiff's jurisdictional claim. See Ticketmaster-New York, Inc. v. Alioto, 26 F.3d 201, 203 (1st Cir.1994). We then add to the mix facts put forward by the defendants, to the extent that they are uncontradicted. See, e.g., Topp v. CompAir Inc., 814 F.2d 830, 836-37 (1st Cir.1987). We caution that, despite the liberality of this approach, the law does not require us struthiously to credit conclusory allegations or draw farfetched inferences. Ticketmaster-N.Y., 26 F.3d at 203. 28 A district court may exercise authority over a defendant by virtue of either general or specific jurisdiction. See Donatelli v. National Hockey League, 893 F.2d 459, 462-63 (1st Cir.1990). General jurisdiction exists when the litigation is not directly founded on the defendant's forum-based contacts, but the defendant has nevertheless engaged in continuous and systematic activity, unrelated to the suit, in the forum state. United Elec., Radio & Mach. Workers v. 163 Pleasant St. Corp., 960 F.2d 1080, 1088 (1st Cir.1992). MSL does not argue, and we find no facts to suggest, that any of the Eight Individual Defendants can be brought before a Massachusetts court on a general jurisdiction theory. 29 In the absence of general jurisdiction, a court's power depends upon the existence of specific jurisdiction. Specific jurisdiction exists when there is a demonstrable nexus between a plaintiff's claims and a defendant's forum-based activities, such as when the litigation itself is founded directly on those activities. See Donatelli, 893 F.2d at 462. In this instance, MSL asserts specific jurisdiction under Mass. Gen. L. ch. 223A. § 3 (1992). MSL cites variously to section 3(a), which extends personal jurisdiction over a person, who acts directly or by an agent, as to a cause of action in law or equity arising from the person's ... transacting any business in Massachusetts, and to section 3(c), which authorizes personal jurisdiction over a non-resident who causes tortious injury by an act or omission in this Commonwealth. 30 We need not pause to consider the particulars of the Massachusetts long-arm statute. Even if that statute, correctly applied, would purport to grant jurisdiction over the Eight Individual Defendants--a matter of state law on which we take no view--MSL still would have to demonstrate that the exercise of jurisdiction pursuant to that statute comports with the strictures of the Constitution. Pritzker v. Yari, 42 F.3d 53, 60 (1st Cir.1994). In the personal jurisdiction context, we have characterized compliance with the Constitution as implicating three distinct components, namely, relatedness, purposeful availment (sometimes called 'minimum contacts'), and reasonableness. Foster-Miller, 46 F.3d at 144. We analyze the situations of the Eight Individuals Defendants through this prism. 31 In order for the extension of personal jurisdiction to survive constitutional scrutiny, a claim must arise out of, or be related to, the defendant's in-forum activities. Ticketmaster-N.Y., 26 F.3d at 206. We have approached the relatedness inquiry with slightly different emphases when the plaintiff asserts a contract claim then when she asserts a tort claim: if a contract claim, our stereotypical inquiry tends to ask whether the defendant's forum-based activities are instrumental in the formation of the contract, Hahn v. Vermont Law Sch., 698 F.2d 48, 51 (1st Cir.1983); if a tort claim, we customarily look to whether the plaintiff has established cause in fact (i.e., the injury would not have occurred 'but for' the defendant's forum-state activity) and legal cause (i.e., the defendant's in-state conduct gave birth to the cause of action). United Elec., Radio & Mach. Workers, 960 F.2d at 1089; see also Ticketmaster-N.Y., 26 F.3d at 207 (noting that the relatedness inquiry is intended in part to ensure[ ] that the element of causation remains in the forefront of the due process investigation). In respect to the Eight Individual Defendants, MSL presents only tort claims before us, 5 and thus our relatedness analysis thus focuses on causation. We find this element clearly lacking as regards the seven Committee members. 32 The only activities undertaken in Massachusetts by any of these seven persons that possibly could relate to MSL's state-law claims consists of the participation of three of them in the Boston meeting and the attendance of all seven at the Nantucket retreat. MSL's insinuations notwithstanding, the particularized facts that were before the district court show conclusively that both of these activities were benign: the Boston meeting dealt with MSL in a purely peripheral sense (doing no more than to delay the site visit to MSL's facility by one month), 6 and the retreat did not deal with MSL at all. 33 MSL also argues that two letters written to it by James White, an ABA consultant, are sufficient to extend personal jurisdiction over the Eight Individual Defendants. One of these communiques informed MSL of the Committee's decision not to grant MSL provisional approval; contemporaneous copies were sent by White to the seven Committee members. The other letter informed MSL of the Council's decision to reject its application for a variance pursuant to Standard 802 and to deny its accreditation appeal. Contemporaneous copies of this letter were sent to defendants Hasl, Moeser, and Ramsey. 34 These missives do not carry weight in the jurisdictional calculus vis-a-vis the Eight Individual Defendants. We cannot subscribe to a transitive view of minimum contacts, which would hold that a letter from A to B that reports on C's actions confers personal jurisdiction over C in B's home state based on those actions. Without a more substantial nexus, the extension of such jurisdiction would violate due process, for the connection between C's actions in an extra-forum jurisdiction and B's home state is too attenuated to satisfy the relatedness requirement. See Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 417, 104 S.Ct. 1868, 1873-74, 80 L.Ed.2d 404 (1984). Nor do we think that the case for the application of such a novel rule is bolstered by the mere fact that A (acting, for aught that appears, on his own initiative) chooses to inform C of his communication with B by mailing her a copy of it. 35 Although MSL does not assert in so many words that the Committee's denial of accreditation at the Brooklyn meeting constitutes conduct directed into Massachusetts sufficient to bestow personal jurisdiction, it intimates as much. We therefore address this possibility. The transmission of facts or information into Massachusetts via telephone or mail would of course constitute evidence of a jurisdictional contact directed into the forum state, see Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 476, 105 S.Ct. 2174, 2184, 85 L.Ed.2d 528 (1985), but we must determine whether the Committee's decision to deny accreditation--a decision that had effects in Massachusetts--qualifies as such a contact. 36 We have wrestled before with this issue of whether the in-forum effects of extra-forum activities suffice to constitute minimum contacts and have found in the negative. For example, in Sawtelle v. Farrell, 70 F.3d 1381 (1st Cir.1995), we recounted Kowalski v. Doherty, Wallace, Pillsbury & Murphy, 787 F.2d 7 (1st Cir.1986), and noted that in Kowalski we rejected the plaintiff's contention that, because the 'effects' of the firm's negligence were felt in New Hampshire, the law firm had caused an injury there by conduct directed at that forum. Sawtelle, 70 F.3d at 1390. Just as the New Hampshire effects of Massachusetts negligence, without more, could not sustain an action in New Hampshire against the negligent actor, see Kowalski, 787 F.2d at 11, so too the Massachusetts effects of the Eight Individual Defendants' New York actions, without more, fail to sustain an action in a Massachusetts court. Accord Sawtelle, 70 F.3d at 1394 (holding that New Hampshire effects of non-forum negligence, without more, are insufficient to support personal jurisdiction). 37 Ramsey is in a slightly different position. Although what we have just discussed pertains to him--after all, he participated in both the Boston and Brooklyn meetings--it is not conclusive because the record reflects that, unlike his seven cohorts, he had other contacts which might suffice to clear the relatedness hurdle. Ramsey wrote a memorandum to White that memorialized a conversation between Ramsey and MSL's Dean Velvel. Ramsey reported that during this conversation Velvel attempted to couple MSL's effort to obtain waivers under Standard 802 with MSL's plan to persuade the DOE to jettison the ABA as the national accrediting agency for law schools. The memorandum itself indicates that Ramsey sent a copy to Velvel, presumably at MSL, and the inclusion of Velvel's Andover telephone number indicates that Velvel was in Massachusetts when he and Ramsey spoke. Although the contents of this memorandum hardly flatter MSL, the memorandum constitutes some indication that Ramsey engaged in conduct that might bear upon the relatedness inquiry. 38 Because of our doubts about the outcome of the relatedness inquiry vis-a-vis Ramsey, we turn to the question of whether Ramsey's contacts with Massachusetts represent a purposeful availment of the privilege of conducting activities in [Massachusetts], thereby invoking the benefits and protections of [its] laws and making the defendant's involuntary presence before [the Massachusetts] court foreseeable. Pritzker, 42 F.3d at 61 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 39 Even though the record suggests that Ramsey participated in a telephone call with Dean Velvel concerning MSL's accreditation while Velvel was in Massachusetts, it is uninformative as to who initiated the call. In either case, we believe that this solitary telephone conversation and the subsequent mailing of a copy of Ramsey's memorandum, even when combined with Ramsey's participation in the Boston meeting, are insufficient to establish purposeful availment. See, e.g., Aylward v. Fleet Bank, 122 F.3d 616, 618 (8th Cir.1997) (holding that three telephone calls and one letter within a seven month period were insufficient to support the exercise of personal jurisdiction when the alleged injury did not arise directly from the contacts); U.S.S. Yachts, Inc. v. Ocean Yachts, Inc., 894 F.2d 9, 11 (1st Cir.1990) (holding that three letters sent to Puerto Rico were insufficient to support the exercise of personal jurisdiction in that venue). Put another way, based on these exiguous contacts Ramsey could not reasonably have foreseen being haled into a Massachusetts court to answer allegations of a wide-ranging conspiracy. We therefore conclude that the extension of personal jurisdiction to him would violate his due process rights. 40 In a last-ditch effort to stem the tide, MSL laments that it did not have the opportunity to engage in jurisdictional discovery. The docket contains no evidence, however, that MSL ever made a motion or other documented request for jurisdictional discovery in the district court. 7 Therefore, in accordance with firmly settled principles, we will not entertain its plaint now. See Sunview Condo. Ass'n v. Flexel Int'l, Ltd., 116 F.3d 962, 964-65 (1st Cir.1997). 41 We have said enough on this score. Because MSL neither alleged nor proffered sufficient facts to permit the exercise of jurisdiction over the Eight Individual Defendants, the district court did not err when it granted their motion to dismiss. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(2).