Court Opinion

ID: 9557767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 16:57:05.732289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:34.920704
License: Public Domain

WILKINS, Justice
(concurring with comments):
I agree that the defendant is not — and should not be — subject to the jurisdiction of the Utah courts in this matter.
The plaintiff in its complaint states that plaintiff’s clerk through mistake and inadvertence sold the ring to defendant for $127.22 (and defendant fully paid this sum) instead of the actual sales price of $1,595.00. The plaintiff further states that this act “has caused injury to the plaintiff in this state.”
Nothing in the complaint or affidavits filed as a result of the defendant’s motion to quash state precisely or fully the acts upon which plaintiff relies in the long-arm statute,1 though subsections (1), (2), or (3)2 may apply. Assuming one of the enumerated acts is applicable3 (it seems to me that subsection (1) or (2) is the most fertile act on which plaintiff could rely) and further that a nexus exists between one or more of these acts and the claim that plaintiff asserts, still an analysis of the minimum contacts standard of due process requires af-firmance of the lower court for reasons given infra.
The quality and nature of the defendant’s activity within Utah do not reach the status of “notions of fair play and substantial justice” 4 which would allow Utah to assert personal jurisdiction over this nonresident defendant.5
I believe the record before us demonstrates that the defendant’s act in purchasing the ring in Utah was probably purposeful and not fortuitous (or at least a reasonable assumption thereon can be made), and therefore the matter for our consideration is reduced to a measurement of the other aspects of the quality of defendant’s contacts.
The transaction in this case because of (1) the relative smallness of the claim, (2) the completion by both parties to the transaction (simultaneous delivery of the ring and payment therefor), and (3) other attendant circumstances alleged in plaintiff’s complaint about the mistake being attributed to the plaintiff’s clerk does not assume a level of “fair play and substantial justice”6 which should permit jurisdictional assertion by Utah over this defendant.
The inconvenience and expense to defendant — in the context of this case — “ . . . reach[s] sufficient proportions, especially when the plaintiff’s claim is relatively small, that the defendant [may well] be financially compelled to de*599fault.”7 I do not wish to suggest that a single transaction with Utah as the forum state may not be the basis for jurisdictional assertion by Utah courts but do believe that infirmities noted ante in this case of a single transaction do fall short of a proper assertion.
A realistic evaluation of the averments in the complaint, of both the plaintiff’s and defendant’s convenience and expense in litigating here, the scope of the controversy, and the interest of this forum’s asserting jurisdiction requires an affirmance of the District Court’s order quashing service of plaintiff’s complaint.

. Utah Code Ann., 1953, Sec. 78-27-24.

. Id., “(1) The transaction of any business within the state; (2) contracting to supply services or goods in this state; (3) the causing of any injury within this state whether tortious or by breach of warranty.”

. Though I am making an assumption here favorable to plaintiff, 1 think it is risky for a plaintiff to fail to plead clearly and fully the one or more of acts listed in Sec. 78-27-24 on which he relies.

. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 158, 90 L.Ed. 95 (1945).

. I sense that the plaintiff may have difficulty — on the substantive law — to prove a claim on which relief may be granted because of its averment of the mistake of plaintiff’s clerk, and not a mutual mistake or allegation of that type of unilateral mistake on which relief generally can be based. But, this case is before us on a jurisdictional ground and 1 therefore primarily address that matter. I cannot refrain however from some consideration, as noted infra, concerning the averment about the clerk's mistake.

.Note 4, supra.

. Strachan, In Personam Jurisdiction, 1977 Utah L.R. 235, 259.