Court Opinion

ID: 9619323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:26:14.23064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:22.208504
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring.
Rule 4L of the Oregon Rules of Civil Procedure directs courts of this state to take jurisdiction whenever doing so is not inconsistent with the state or federal constitution. Although one might imagine a case where another constitutional issue could be raised, in practice this rule means that an Oregon court has jurisdiction to the limits of due process under the 14th amendment. That, of course, is an issue of federal law to be decided pursuant to the controlling decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
I previously have expressed my doubts about this adoption of a procedural rule that directs court and counsel to turn every case of questionable jurisdiction into an issue, not of Oregon law, but of federal constitutional law. State ex rel Academy Press v. Beckett, 282 Or 701, 718, 581 P2d 496 (1978) (Linde, J., concurring). On such an issue, our own precedents are useful only to the extent that they rightly interpret the latest guidance from the United States Supreme Court. When combined with the rather exceptional practice of using our discretionary writ of mandamus as the means to challenge circuit court jurisdiction, the effect is to give this court an interlocutory appellate function that goes no further than to apply the broad and imprecise federal due process tests of jurisdiction to the facts, or alleged facts, of individual cases.
The Court states the issue in the present case to be “whether Jones, [the Idaho lessee of a copying machine] by signing a contract with a corporation doing business in Oregon and sending monthly payments pursuant to that contract, purposefully availed himself of the privilege of conducting activities within Oregon, thus invoking the benefits and protections of our laws to an extent that it is fair and reasonable for an Oregon court to exert jurisdiction over him.” *743296 Or at 738. The Court takes that criterion from Hanson v. Denckla, 357 US 235, 253, 78 S Ct 1228, 2 L Ed 2d 1283 (1958), which in turn cited Internat Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 US 310, 319, 66 S Ct 154, 90 L Ed 95 (1945). Hanson v. Denckla itself is not factually similar; it held that Florida did not gain jurisdiction to adjudicate ownership of trust property held by a Delaware trust company, an indispensable party under Florida law, merely because the settler had moved to Florida and from there corresponded with the trustee. Nor is any other Supreme Court decision closely analogous to the present case. Nevertheless, I concur with the Court that if this case reached the Supreme Court, it would probably be decided against jurisdiction in Oregon.
Here it is a lessee under a long-term equipment lease, who is said to have brought himself within the jurisdiction of the forum state, Oregon, by purposefully dealing with an enterprise engaged in lease financing. The more common situation for testing whether the defendant “purposefully avails himself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum state, thus invoking the benefits and protection of its laws” probably is one in which an enterprise seeking customers outside its home state is sued in the state of its customer. There is no obvious reason, however, why this criterion should not apply against either party. See, e.g., State ex rel White Lbr v. Sulmonetti, 252 Or 121, 448 P2d 571 (1968), compare Neptune Microfloc v. First Fla Util., 261 Or 494, 495 P2d 263 (1972). If a substantial enterprise in the ordinary course of business seeks out an out-of-state lender for the best available terms, that enterprise appears to have purposefully taken advantage of the opportunity of the other state’s market as much as if it found a customer and made a sale in that state.
Jones, in the present case, was financing acquisition of a piece of business equipment for his insurance business in Idaho, and at the supplier’s initiative he obtained the financing from Colonial Leasing Company, the Oregon plaintiff in the challenged action. For Jones this was a one-time, indirect, largely unplanned transaction. If it falls short of the constitutional criteria for Oregon jurisdiction, it must be because, as the Court observes, it resembles a consumer decision to avail himself of a service offered him by an out-of-state enterprise more than a systematic business decision by Jones’s company to seek financing in the Oregon financial market. These may *744be uncertain characterizations, but that seems to be the most that the present due process criteria offers.
The result of these indeterminate criteria is seen in the Court’s statement that the “reasonableness of exercising jurisdiction over non-residents is a case-by-case question.” 296 Or at 740. That does not strike me as a satisfactory rule, or nonrule, for a threshold legal issue like jurisdiction. I still believe, as I suggested in State ex rel Academy Press v. Beckett, supra, that if fairness to particular litigants in the circumstances of a particular case is to be the test, rather than jurisdiction over recurring types of cases or factual patterns, such ad hoc determinations can be better handled under procedures suitable to a nonconstitutional rule of forum non conveniens than under the guise of federal constitutional law. See State ex rel Academy Press v. Beckett, supra, 282 Or at 721-723.