Court Opinion

ID: 9658136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:47:52.21111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:51.855735
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent, because I believe the majority’s formalistic “five-part” analysis soberly discussing the factors favoring exercise of Minnesota’s long-arm statute misses the forest for the trees. The majority opinion describes at length the complexity of the development transaction with which respondent Whitney was involved in Minnesota as though that were the gravamen of the case with which we are concerned. It is not.
This case is a third-party action by a California resident-client against a California law firm for legal malpractice allegedly committed while giving advice on California law as it affected certain documents giving rise to liability in the underlying Minnesota legal dispute. From 1981 to May 1987, Hopkins & Carley (third-party defendant) provided services to the Whit-neys in California relating to estate planning, taxation, the creation of certain California trusts, incorporation of Whitney family business interests and California probate matters. Only during the last six months of that period did the law firm of Hopkins & Carley provide legal services that had a bearing upon the Minnesota development. David Mitchell, the specific attorney involved, left the firm at that time, but continued his representation of the Whitney trusts and Donna Whitney. During this period, she retained a prominent Twin Cities firm as Minnesota counsel.
The majority opinion attempts to cloud this issue by formulating a novel distinction. Forced to admit that the “general” home of the legal relationship between attorney and client in this case is California, it makes the statement that Minnesota is the “specific” home of the relationship as it involves this bit of legal business. The record simply does not bear this out, nor is authority provided for the distinction. The Whitneys’ documents in this matter were prepared for them in Minnesota by their Minnesota law firm and were sent to Mitchell for his examination and legal opinion on the impact of the California law of trusts as it bore on the transactions. He accom*794panied the client to Minnesota for meetings at which they were represented by their Minnesota law firm. This is a common practice in this day of rapid communications and transportation. To subject out-of-state attorneys to Minnesota jurisdiction for purposes of a malpractice action unwisely interferes with the relationship between attorney and client.
The opinion candidly admits that there is no evidence of any specific act of alleged malpractice committed in Minnesota during the brief period of Hopkins & Carley’s representation. It does not carefully limit its description of attorney Mitchell’s involvement in Minnesota to this six-month period, and it ignores a factor even more fundamental.
Minnesota has little or no interest in providing a forum for a malpractice action by a California client against a California lawyer. California, on the other hand, has a profound interest in allegations of negligence in the performance of legal duties by an attorney licensed under its laws. It would be quite different had the California lawyer tried a lawsuit in a Minnesota court or represented his client before one of our regulatory agencies. What he did, however, was to give advice on the impact of California law as to trusts and the execution of documents on the validity of loan guarantees executed in Minnesota pursuant to the advice of Minnesota lawyers. In doing so, he traveled to Minnesota and was present at meetings in which she was represented by her Minnesota counsel. This does not constitute “purposeful availment” of the forum state for purposes of a due process analysis.
In Asahi Metal Ind. Co. v. Superior Court of California, Solano County, 480 U.S. 102, 107 S.Ct. 1026, 94 L.Ed.2d 92 (1987), the United States Supreme Court addressed the question of a third-party action by a Japanese supplier of valves against a Taiwanese tire manufacturer. The underlying wrongful-death action had been settled and a “stream of commerce” theory was advanced to hold the lawsuit in California. The court, in rejecting this application, required that the
“substantial connection” * * * between the defendant and the forum State necessary for a finding of minimum contacts must come about by an action of the defendant purposefully directed toward the forum State.
Id., at 111, 107 S.Ct. at 1032 (citations omitted; emphasis in original). Only when such a cognizant exposure to possible liability may be said to exist can constitutional due process restraints be satisfied. Only when the actor may reasonably be said to be able to foresee being “haled into” the courts of the forum state can due process be satisfied. The necessity of interstate travel with clients by attorneys licensed by individual states requires that restraint be exercised by courts in the application of a state’s long-arm statute to a protection of its residents or upon clear and unequivocal evidence of acts the negligent performance of which would reasonably give rise to the foreseeability of being haled into the courts of another state.
The majority opinion states a pragmatic reason for holding the third-party malpractice action here. The underlying action belongs here, and neither attorney Mitchell nor his subsequent law firm has challenged personal jurisdiction. There was a pragmatic reason for the Taiwanese manufacturer to hold Asahi in a California court as well; doubtless the manufacturer preferred litigation against a powerful Japanese corporation in a neutral forum. Neither pragmatic reason comports with the constitutional requirements of due process for the third-party defendant, because it offends “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 158, 90 L.Ed. 95 (1945) (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457, 463, 61 S.Ct. 339, 343, 85 L.Ed. 278 (1940)).
I would follow the analysis of the United States Supreme Court upon so basic a constitutional issue and reverse the trial court.