Court Opinion

ID: 9462469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:41:37.03962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:36.212022
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I find myself unable to concur in the majority opinion, which reverses the decision of the district court for unassigned error and without seriously suggesting that it is incorrect. Plaintiff’s complaint was filed in June 1973. In August 1974, after almost two hundred interrogatories, other discovery, and two hearings on the subject of in personam jurisdiction, the court dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction over the parties defendant. As I understand our ruling, we reverse in order to permit plaintiff to make further efforts to discover who the proper defendant is, not because the record affords any serious basis for belief that it is either of the present parties.
Before us, plaintiff-appellant Skidmore phrased the sole issue as:
The trial court erred in dismissing appellant’s cause of action on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction as to Syntex Laboratories, Inc., in view of the fact that the record affirmatively reflects that there is a technical misnomer in the name of defendant, Syntex Laboratories, Inc. whereby appellant should have been allowed additional discovery and to amend the Complaint.
This, however, misstates it.
Ms. Skidmore attempted to cite “Syn-tex Laboratories, Inc., a Division of Syn-tex Corporation,” by which she apparently intended to cite (1) Syntex Laboratories, Inc. (a Delaware corporation) and (2) Syntex Corporation (a Panamanian corporation). Her complaint alleges that the defendant(s) produced a birth control pill which injured her. For citation purposes (in personam jurisdiction purposes) she invoked the Texas longarm statute, claiming that the defendants) (1) committed a tort in Texas (2) out of which her cause of action arose and (3) neither maintained a regular place of business in the state nor appointed a resident agent. Service of citation was therefore had on the Texas Secretary of State. Defendants) repeatedly denied that the court had in personam jurisdiction. Specifically, each denied having engaged in business in Texas at the time the alleged tort occurred. The trial court at first denied defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction but was finally convinced at a subsequent hearing and granted the motion without prejudice.
It seems to me clear that the district court correctly determined that, at least as of the time he dismissed, jurisdiction was lacking. At the hearing on the motion to dismiss it developed that Syntex Corporation never produced, nor does it now produce, birth control pills and that Syntex Laboratories, Inc. does produce the pills now but was not incorporated or doing business anywhere at the time Ms. Skidmore took her pills. There is no proof that Syntex Laboratories, Inc. is the successor to the producer of the pill which allegedly injured' Ms. Skidmore. Thus, the problem is not that Skidmore misnamed the maker of the pills or the defendant in her complaint. Rather, it is that the maker is either unknown or no longer exists, and Ms. Skidmore failed to prove that either of the parties she cited via the longarm statute is legally substitutable or answerable for the maker’s actions. Thus, she failed, as the Texas statute requires, to make even a prima facie showing of an essential jurisdictional fact: that either party cited committed a tort in Texas.
The law in this circuit on burdens and elements of proof for federal in personam jurisdiction based on the Texas Long Arm Statute is outlined in Product Promotions, Inc. v. Cousteau, 495 F.2d 483, 489—91 (5th Cir. 1974) and Jetco Electronic Industries, Inc. v. Gardiner, 473 F.2d 1228, 1232-35 (5th Cir. 1973). In applying the law of those cases to the facts here, it appears that Ms. Skidmore failed to make a “prima facie showing of *1251the facts on which jurisdiction was predicated” under the Texas statute. Cousteau at 491. Ms. Skidmore had had over a year in which to get in a position to do so, with the full panoply of federal discovery procedures ready to her hand. I am not able to join in the conclusion that the district judge abused his discretion or acted precipitately in these circumstances. Nor can I join in the majority’s observations regarding limitations, which seem to me in the nature of prejudgments of an issue which was neither passed on below nor presented to us. I therefore respectfully dissent.