Opinion ID: 3045474
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Contacts with Pennsylvania

Text: Pilatus contends that appellants cannot sue it in Pennsylvania because Pilatus has had almost no contacts within Pennsylvania. In this regard, it is undisputed that Pilatus never has had offices, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, facilities, employees, officers, directors, owners, shareholders, agents, assets, investments, bank accounts, or subsidiaries in Pennsylvania; Pilatus never has owned, leased, or used real property in Pennsylvania; and Pilatus never has registered to do business in Pennsylvania. In the last five years, Pilatus has not sold any aircraft to purchasers in Pennsylvania or shipped anything directly to persons or entities in Pennsylvania.4 Pilatus has not advertised or marketed its products in Pennsylvania and did not design the PC-12 for the Pennsylvania market specifically, although it did target the United States market generally by designing the plane to ensure its compliance with FAA requirements. Within the five years preceding this 4 We are not implying that before the five-year period it made such sales or shipments. We also note that the five-year period as such has no particular significance, but we refer to that period throughout our discussion of Pilatus’s contacts within Pennsylvania because it is the time frame that Pilatus used in the affirmations it filed with its motion to dismiss. 8 litigation, however, Pilatus did have some direct contacts within Pennsylvania. In the early 2000s, Pilatus sent two employees to view displays at a potential supplier in Pennsylvania that Pilatus never used. Moreover, Pilatus purchased $1,030,139 in products, equipment, or services5 from suppliers in Pennsylvania, an amount that represented less than one percent of Pilatus’s total annual purchases for an approximately fiveyear period. PilBAL also had some contacts within Pennsylvania during this time. From 2003 to 2007, PilBAL sold $600,000 worth of spare airplane parts to its independent dealer serving Pennsylvania, a Maryland company called SkyTech, Inc. At SkyTech’s request, PilBAL shipped parts directly to Pennsylvania customers. In 2005, PilBAL paid $12,705.80 to place an advertisement in five or six6 issues of Police and Security News, a national publication with offices in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The record does not contain any evidence of sales of PC-12s in Pennsylvania by Pilatus, PilBAL, or SkyTech. 5 The record does not specify what products, equipment, or services Pilatus purchased from Pennsylvania suppliers. 6 An affirmation of Martha Geisshuesler, an officer of PilBAL, in the record is unclear with respect to how many times the advertisement ran. It notes that “[t]he advertisement ran in five issues,” but that “PilBAL paid $12,705.80 for the six spots.” App. at 173. The difference is of no significance on this appeal. 9 Nevertheless, an owner-operator list that Pilatus maintains for warranty purposes shows that some of its planes have ended up in Pennsylvania and some may have been resold there. At the time of Pilatus’s motion to dismiss, four PC-12s and four other Pilatus planes were based in Pennsylvania,7 but the record does not show how the four PC-12s reached Pennsylvania.