Opinion ID: 195309
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Tallying the Results.

Text: our analysis by retracing our steps. At the first stage of the due process inquiry, appellant succeeded in showing that its 24 putative cause of action arose from, or related to, defendant's contacts with the forum. See supra Part II(B)(1). At the second stage of the inquiry, appellant succeeded in showing defendant's purposeful availment. See supra Part II(B)(2). On neither prong, however, did appellant demonstrate more than a bare minimum; we found its claim of relatedness enfeebled by the attenuated causal link between the allegedly defamatory utterance and the harm allegedly suffered, and its claim of purposefulness enfeebled by the fact that the defendant did not initiate either the telephone call or the resultant interview. The frailty of appellant's showings on the first two furcula of the due process inquiry required us to consider the gestalt factors and assess the reasonableness of an assertion of jurisdiction by a Massachusetts court. Doing so, see supra Part II(C), we found that, while many of those factors possess little significance for purposes of this case, there is one factor the defendant's convenience that stands out from the crowd. It is this factor that consistently has been declared deserving of the greatest weight in kindred cases. And it is this factor that may serve as an amulet to ward off vexatiousness and harassment. We now conclude, considering the totality of the circumstances, that defendant's burden of appearance is so onerous that it renders the exercise of in personam jurisdiction unreasonable. This conclusion carries the day. A distant court cannot constitutionally exercise in personam jurisdiction over a non- resident defendant at the behest of a plaintiff who can muster 25 only the most tenuous showings of relatedness and purposefulness if, as in this case, forcing the defendant to defend in the forum would be plainly unreasonable. This is as it should be, for, at bottom, the dictates of due process demand that a court's assertion of in personam jurisdiction comport with considerations of fair play and substantial justice. See, e.g., International Shoe, 326 U.S. at 320. To ensure achievement of this goal, the machinery of jurisdictional analysis is designed to refine judges' intuitions about the relevant equities, not to eliminate those equities from the decisional process. Relatedness and purposeful availment are cogs in this analytic machinery. The gestalt factors comprise the machinery's fail-safe device; they are not a necessary part of the machinery's day-to-day operation, but if, in the course of a particularized analysis, the gears mesh imperfectly because a given set of facts does not fit into any of the standard molds, the gestalt factors take hold. This case exemplifies the proper operation of the failsafe device. It hardly seems fair, on the strength of a single remark uttered in the course of a single unsolicited telephone call from a Massachusetts-based journalist, to compel a California resident to defend a tort suit in a court 3000 miles away. The unfairness is heightened because the link between the remark and the injury has been attenuated by republication in the popular press. Our commitment to fair play and substantial justice precludes us from subjecting a person to the rigors of 26 long-distance litigation on the basis of so gossamer a showing of causation and voluntariness. We need go no further. When all is said and done, courts must assert jurisdiction, or abjure its assertion, with an eye toward fundamental fairness. Thus, here, the district court's dismissal of the instant action for want of in personam jurisdiction must be Affirmed. 27