Court Opinion

ID: 9753638
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:21:26.83374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:39.715874
License: Public Domain

Conpokd, P. J. A. D.,
Temporarily Assigned (dissenting). I would go no further than to set aside the dismissal of the action, allowing plaintiffs a reasonable time to accomplish personal service of process on the defendant within this State. I do not believe plaintiffs have effected personal jurisdiction over defendant in New Jersey by mailing process to him in New York, compatible with any justifiable rationale of the minimum contacts principle.
Defendant had no presence in New Jersey when process was left for him at his mother’s home, business or otherwise. He had moved from the State about a year before. For did plaintiffs’ injuries emanate from any action or activity of the defendant in this State or from action elsewhere having significant effects here. See Avdel Corporation v. Mercure, 58 *131N. J. 264, 269 (1971); Roland v. Modell’s Shoppers World of Bergen Cty., 92 N. J. Super. 1 (App. Div. 1966); Corporate Dev. Spe., Inc. v. Warren-Teed Pharm., Inc., 102 N. J. Super. 143 (App. Div. 1968), certif. den. 52 N. J. 535 (1968); Restatement, Conflict of Laws 2d, §§ 36, 37 (1969).
The “Few Jersey roots” of the Pennsylvania accident alluded to by the Court as a basis for sustaining jurisdiction here — New Jersey registration of car and driver — are in my judgment too tenuous a connection with the accident for such consequences. See Restatement, Conflict of Laws 2d, § 36, Comment e, p. 149 (1969), indicating that a state is naturally interested in all acts done within its territory and that therefore “[a] state will usually have judicial jurisdio» tion over an individual who does, or who causes to be done, in the state an act, even though it is not claimed to be tortious, as to causes of action arising from the act”. (Emphasis added.) In no realistic sense did this accident arise from the facts that defendant and the vehicle he drove were licensed and registered, respectively, in New Jersey.
I am aware of no case or authoritative expression anywhere which sustains “contacts” such as those here advanced by plaintiffs as sufficient to sustain jurisdiction over an absent defendant. See Owens v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, 52 Cal. 2d 822, 345 P. 2d 921, 924 (Sup. Ct. 1959). Plaintiffs’ dilemma here is simply a result of failure by their attorneys (not New Jersey counsel) to bring a timely action in an appropriate jurisdiction. Pennsylvania was the natural forum in which to bring this action, and defendant could have been sued there under the Pennsylvania non-resident motorists act. Instead, counsel waited until the Pennsylvania and New Jersey statutes of limitations had almost expired, and then forwarded the case to New Jersey attorneys for suit, apparently without investigating to determine if defendant, an unmarried resident at his parents’ New Jersey home at the time of the accident almost two years before, was still a resident there. There is no indication whatever that *132defendant’s removal from the State in the meantime was motivated in any way by plaintiffs’ pending claim against him.
Cases involving jurisdictional due process cannot in my judgment be decided on a court’s conception of the good faith of a plaintiff in selecting a forum for action; nor upon the absence of prejudice to a defendant in being subjected to suit in the particular jurisdiction where there are insufficient contacts present. “Fairness”, in the due process sense of International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310, 316, 66 S. Ct. 154, 90 L. Ed. 95 (1945) and similar decisions of the United States Supreme Court, is couched only in terms of the foreign defendant having “certain minimum contacts [with the forum] such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice’.” I cannot find such minimum contacts of defendant with Yew Jersey in this case on any of the several postulates for jurisdiction which have been developed by the cases or by the Restatement, Conflict of Laws 2d, cited above, or on any basis which independent thought about the matter suggests.
The squeeze on plaintiffs here is not the result of reasonable enforcement of due process by the courts below but that of the carelessness of counsel in letting the statutes of limitations of those states having potential jurisdiction over defendant in the matter go by without suit. Obviously defendant had nothing to do with that. Relief from such statutes cannot be afforded plaintiffs at the price of dispensation with due process requirements as against defendant. Jurisdiction over the person is not a matter of discretion with the court but a question of power to act. Perhaps plaintiffs have a negligence action against the attorneys handling the matter in the first instance.
I would thus modify the judgment of the Appellate Division only to the extent of the expression in the first paragraph of this dissent.
*133For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice Weintbaub, Justices Jacobs, Hall and Mountain, and Judges Sullivan and Lewis — 6.
For modification — Judge Coneobd — -1.