Court Opinion

ID: 9427740
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:45.285006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:09.388625
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Black-mun joins, dissenting.
For over 30 years the standard by which to measure the constitutionally permissible reach of state-court jurisdiction has been well established:
“[D]ue process requires only that in order to subject a defendant to a judgment in personam, if he be not present within the territory of the forum, he have certain minimum contacts with it such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend 'traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’ ” International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310, 316 (1945), quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U. S. 457, 463 (1940).
The corollary, that the Due Process Clause forbids the assertion of jurisdiction over a defendant “with which the state has no contacts, ties, or relations,” 326 U. S., at 319, is equally clear. The concepts of fairness and substantial justice as applied to an evaluation of “the quality and nature of the [defendant’s] activity,” ibid., are not readily susceptible of further definition, however, and it is not surprising that the constitutional standard is easier to state than to apply.
This is a difficult case, and reasonable minds may differ as to whether respondents have alleged a sufficient “relationship among the defendant [s], the forum, and the litigation,” Shaffer v. Heitner, 433 U. S. 186, 204 (1977), to satisfy the requirements of International Shoe. I am concerned, however, that the majority has reached its result by taking an unnecessarily narrow view of petitioners’ forum-related conduct. The majority asserts that “respondents seek to base jurisdiction on one, isolated occurrence and whatever inferences can be drawn therefrom: the fortuitous circumstance that a single Audi automobile, sold in New York to New York *314residents, happened to suffer an accident while passing through Oklahoma.” Ante, at 295. If that were the case, I would readily agree that the minimum contacts necessary to sustain jurisdiction are not present. But the basis for the assertion of jurisdiction is not the happenstance that an individual over whom petitioners had no control made a unilateral decision to take a chattel with him to a distant State. Rather, jurisdiction is premised on the deliberate and purposeful actions of the defendants themselves in choosing to become part of'a nationwide, indeed a global, network for marketing and servicing automobiles.
Petitioners are sellers of a product whose utility derives from its mobility. The unique importance of the automobile in today’s society, which is discussed in Mr. Justice Black-mun’s dissenting opinion, post, at 318, needs no further elaboration. Petitioners know that their customers buy cars not only to make short trips, but also to travel long distances. In fact, the nationwide service network with which they are affiliated was designed to facilitate and encourage such travel. Seaway would be unlikely to sell many cars if authorized service were available only in Massena, N. Y. Moreover, local dealers normally derive a substantial portion of their revenues from their service operations and thereby obtain a further economic benefit from the opportunity to service cars which were sold in other States. It is apparent that petitioners have not attempted to minimize the chance that their activities will have effects in other States; on the contrary, they have chosen to do business in a way that increases that chance, because it is to their economic advantage to do so.
To be sure, petitioners could not know in advance that this particular automobile would be driven to Oklahoma. They must have anticipated, however, that a substantial portion of the cars they sold would travel out of New York. Seaway, a local dealer in the second most populous State, and World*315Wide, one of only seven regional Audi distributors in the entire country, see Brief for Respondents 2, would scarcely have been surprised to learn that a car sold by them had been driven in Oklahoma on Interstate 44, a heavily traveled transcontinental highway. In the case of the distributor, in particular, the probability that some of the cars it sells will be driven in every one of the contiguous States must amount to a virtual certainty. This knowledge should alert a reasonable businessman to the likelihood that a defect in the product might manifest itself in the forum State — not because of some unpredictable, aberrant, unilateral action by a single buyer, but in the normal course of the operation of the vehicles for their intended purpose.
It is misleading for the majority to characterize the argument in favor of jurisdiction as one of “ 'foreseeability’ alone.” Ante, at 295. As economic entities petitioners reach out from New York, knowingly causing effects in other States and receiving economic advantage both from the ability to cause such effects themselves and from the activities of dealers and distributors in other States. While they did not receive revenue from making direct sales in Oklahoma, they intentionally became part of an interstate economic network, which included dealerships in Oklahoma, for pecuniary gain. In light of this purposeful conduct I do not believe it can be said that petitioners "had no reason to expect to be haled before a[n Oklahoma] court.” Shaffer v. Heitner, supra, at 216; see ante, at 297, and Kulko v. California Superior Court, 436 U. S. 84, 97-98 (1978).
The majority apparently acknowledges that if a product is purchased in the forum State by a consumer, that State may assert jurisdiction over everyone in the chain of distribution. See ante, at 297-298. With this I agree. But I cannot agree that jurisdiction is necessarily lacking if the product enters the State not through the channels of distribution but in the course of its intended use by the consumer. We have recog*316nized the role played by the automobile in the expansion of our notions of personal jurisdiction. See Shaffer v. Heitner, supra, at 204; Hess v. Pawloski, 274 U. S. 352 (1927). Unlike most other chattels, which may find their way into States far from where they were purchased because their owner takes them there, the intended use of the automobile is precisely as a means of traveling from one place to another. In such a case, it is highly artificial to restrict the concept of the “stream of commerce” to the chain of distribution from the manufacturer to the ultimate consumer.
I sympathize with the majority’s concern that persons ought to be able to structure their conduct so as not to be subject to suit in distant forums. But that may not always be possible. Some activities by their very nature may foreclose the option of conducting them in such a way as to avoid subjecting oneself to jurisdiction in multiple forums. This is by no means to say that all sellers of automobiles should be subject to suit everywhere; but a distributor of automobiles to a multistate market and a local automobile dealer who makes himself part of a nationwide network of dealerships can fairly expect that the cars they sell may cause injury in distant States and that they may be called on to defend a resulting lawsuit there.
In light of the quality and nature of petitioners’ activity, the majority’s reliance on Kulko v. California Superior Court, supra, is misplaced. Kulko involved the assertion of state-court jurisdiction over a nonresident individual in connection with an action to modify his child custody rights and support obligations. His only contact with the forum State was that he gave his minor child permission to live there with her mother. In holding that the exercise of jurisdiction violated the Due Process Clause, we emphasized that the cause of action as well as the defendant’s actions in relation to the forum State arose “not from the defendant’s commercial transactions in interstate commerce, but rather from his personal, *317domestic relations,” 436 U. S., at 97 (emphasis supplied), contrasting Kulko’s actions with those of the insurance company in McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U. S. 220 (1957), which were undertaken for commercial benefit.*
Manifestly, the “quality and nature” of commercial activity is different, for purposes of the International Shoe test, from actions from which a defendant obtains no economic advantage. Commercial activity is more likely to cause effects in a larger sphere, and the actor derives an economic benefit from the activity that makes it fair to require him to answer for his conduct where its effects are felt. The profits may be used to pay the costs of suit, and knowing that the activity is likely to have effects in other States the defendant can readily insure against the costs of those effects, thereby sparing himself much of the inconvenience of defending in a distant forum.
Of course, the Constitution forbids the exercise of jurisdiction if the defendant had no judicially cognizable contacts with the forum. But as the majority acknowledges, if such contacts are present the jurisdictional inquiry requires a balancing of various interests and policies. See ante, at 292; Rush v. Savchuk, post, at 332. I believe such contacts are to be found here and that, considering all of the interests and policies at stake, requiring petitioners to defend this action in Oklahoma is not beyond the bounds of the Constitution. Accordingly, I dissent.

Similarly, I believe the Court in Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U. S. 235 (1958), was influenced by the fact that trust administration has traditionally been considered a peculiarly local activity.