Court Opinion

ID: 9481723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:29:18.962424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:31.716001
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Defendant Sid Matthews may or may not have engaged, on occasion, in the transaction of business within the State of Michigan. As I read the affidavits, however, they make it plain that the plaintiffs can offer no competent evidence to show that the claims asserted in their complaint are claims “arising out of an act” that created a “relationship” (i.e. “[t]he transaction of any business within the state ... [or] ... a contract for services to be rendered or for materials to be furnished in the state by the defendant”) capable of supporting the exercise of limited personal jurisdiction over Mr. Matthews pursuant to Mich.Comp. Laws § 600.705(1) or (5). A showing that the claim asserted is one “arising out of” such an act is essential to the exercise of limited jurisdiction. Accordingly, and because there is no basis for the exercise of general personal jurisdiction under Mich. Comp.Laws § 600.701 (a statute applicable only when the individual is present in the state, is a Michigan domiciliary, or has consented to be sued in Michigan), I think the district court was correct in dismissing the action for lack of jurisdiction over Mr. Matthews’ person.
The affidavit executed by plaintiff Herman Theunissen alleges, “on information and belief,” that drivers for Direct Transit Lines, Theunissen’s employer, picked up 122 loads of lumber from Matthews in 1988 at Matthews’ request. For reasons to be explained shortly, I think it is appropriate to read Mr. Theunissen’s affidavit in the light of the record as a whole. Read in this light, the affidavit does not establish that Matthews had contacted Direct Transit, in Michigan or elsewhere, to arrange for pickup of the particular shipment out of which the March 8th accident arose. It does not establish that Matthews had contacted Direct Transit to arrange for pickup of any other shipment. It does not establish that Matthews had entered into a contract of carriage with Direct Transit for the shipment out of which the accident arose. And it does not establish that as of March 8, 1988, Matthews had ever entered into a contract of carriage with Direct Transit.
The affidavit contains a number of generalized references to “customers” of Matthews in Michigan, but does not specifically allege that Weyerhaeuser Company — the consignee of the lumber that Mr. Theunis-sen was picking up in Canada at the time of his accident — was a Matthews customer. The affidavit provides no reason to suppose that Mr. Theunissen would have had any way of knowing whose customer Weyer-haeuser, or any other consignee, really was. Mr. Matthews’ subsequent affidavit shows, without contradiction, that in point of fact Matthews had no customers in the United States.
In his affidavit Mr. Matthews swears, among other things, that
“3. ... I do not hire or retain truckers or trucking firms to deliver materials to the United States.
4. I do not hire or pay for freight for delivery of materials to the United States in any way.
5. My business consists of the operation of a lumber reloading business and storage yard.
6. My customers are wholesalers who buy the lumber from mills located in Canada.
7. When my customer, the wholesaler, buys the lumber the mill arranges for its shipment to my yard.
8. The wholesaler contracts with me to unload the lumber and store it at my yard.
9. Neither I nor my company purchase the lumber or assume ownership of it in any way.
10. The wholesaler then sells the lumber to its customers, and arranges for pick-up and transportation from my yard to its ultimate location.
*146711. I have no control over where the lumber comes from and where it is going.”
The affidavit of Direct Transit’s Administration Manager, Eugene Fowler, represents the plaintiffs’ only substantive response to Mr. Matthews’ affidavit. The Fowler affidavit establishes that Direct Transit’s computerized records reflect pickups of 252 loads of lumber from Matthews between July of 1988 and April 19, 1990. (This is perfectly consistent with Mr. Matthews’ own evidence, of course — and quantified proof of pickups at the Matthews yard in Canada would not have established that Matthews transacted any business in Michigan in March of 1988 even if the proof had dealt with that time period.) The Fowler affidavit makes no attempt to show that Weyerhaeuser or any other U.S. lumber company was ever a “customer” of Matthews. The affidavit does go on to say that on ten of the loads picked up in Canada from and after July of 1988, Matthews paid Direct Transit’s freight charges. Matthews is thus said to have been Direct Transit’s customer as to those ten shipments. Bills of lading for eight of the ten shipments are attached, as the affidavit recites. Beyond stating that he has testified on personal knowledge and is a competent witness, Mr. Fowler says nothing further in his affidavit.
Every one of the eight bills of lading attached to the Fowler affidavit lists a company other than Matthews as shipper. Every one of them lists a company other than Weyerhaeuser as consignee. One of the bills appears to list Matthews Lumber Transfer as “broker;” three others bear the handwritten word “MATH,” preceded by the letter “T” in a circle, both of which symbols have been added to a portion of the form that lists the consignee as Georgia Pacific Corp.; one bill of lading bears a handwritten instruction to bill Matthews for an “S/O chg.” in the amount of $45; two (including one marked “T Math”) say to bill Matthews without specifying the type of charge or the amount; and the remaining two documents contain no reference to Matthews at all. Not one of the eight bills of lading bears a date earlier than December 2, 1988 — a date almost nine months after Mr. Theunissen’s accident.
Assuming, contrary to what is suggested by the bills of lading themselves, that Matthews did pay Direct Transit for as many as ten of the pickups made at Matthews’ yard in Canada subsequent to June of 1988, such payments (covering less than four percent of the total pickups during that time frame) would not show that Matthews ever made a sale to a customer in Michigan. Documentary evidence-of a few post-accident payments to Direct Transit would refute Mr. Matthews’ claim that he never made such payments, to be sure, but it would not affirmatively establish limited personal jurisdiction in this case. The question is not whether Mr. Theunissen’s accident arose out of Direct Transit’s transacting business in Canada, but whether it arose out of Matthews’ transacting business in Michigan. On that question, it seems to me, the Fowler affidavit gives the plaintiffs no real help.
If defendant Matthews had moved for summary judgment under Rule 56, Fed.R. Civ.P., application of the summary judgment standards articulated by the Supreme Court in the Celotex trilogy1 could only have resulted in judgment for Mr. Matthews. It is absolutely clear that under Michigan law “[t]he ‘transaction of any business’ in Michigan by the [defendant] would ... confer no limited personal jurisdiction upon the District Court unless the cause of action pleaded by the plaintiff arose out of the business transacted there.” Lanier v. American Bd. of Endodontics, 843 F.2d 901, 908 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 926, 109 S.Ct. 310, 102 L.Ed.2d 329 (1988). Cf. Sifers v. Horen, 385 Mich. 195, 188 N.W.2d 623 (1971) (“limited jurisdiction ... exposes a non-resident to suit in Michigan only for a cause which arose out of the relationship serving as a basis for such jurisdiction_”) The affi*1468davits filed in this case simply do not show that the hand injury which Mr. Theunissen suffered while picking up the load of lumber consigned to Weyerhaeuser in March of 1988 arose out of a sale to Weyerhaeuser by Matthews, as opposed to a sale to Wey-erhaeuser by a customer of Matthews. The affidavits do not show that the injury arose out of Matthews having called or written Direct Transit to arrange for the pickup, as opposed to a customer of Matthews having done so. And the affidavits do not show that the injury arose out of any other Michigan business relationship existing in March of 1988 between Mr. Matthews and Weyerhaeuser, or Direct Transit, or Matthews’ former girl friend, or anyone else.
Although Mr. Matthews could have moved for summary judgment on the jurisdictional issue under Rule 56, Fed.R.Civ.P., he chose instead to move for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(2). In its procedural aspect, the latter rule mirrors the former — and under the circumstances presented in this case, I am not sure I understand why the treatment accorded the affidavits should be thought to differ substantially depending on which rule was cited by the moving party.
It is true that in Serras v. First Tennessee Bank Nat. Ass’n, 875 F.2d 1212 (6th Cir.1989), this court, relying on a pre-Celo-tex decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, refused to look beyond a prima facie showing of jurisdiction presented in affidavits that the plaintiffs submitted in opposition to a motion by the defendant for dismissal under Rule 12(b)(2). But I do not understand the Serras panel to have based its decision on the fact that the defendant cited Rule 12(b)(2) rather than Rule 56. In stating its holding at 875 F.2d at 1215, in fact, the Serras court characterized the defendant’s motion as a “motion for summary judgment” — and it is perfectly obvious that the court’s holding would have been the same if the defendant really had moved for summary judgment.
Even if the Serras court had been willing to sanction use of the affidavits contradicting the prima facie showing of jurisdiction made by the plaintiffs’ affidavits, it is most unlikely that the court would have found no genuine issue as to any material fact. The question in Serras was whether the out-of-state defendant had or had not made false representations to the plaintiffs in Michigan, and the district court was “in clear error” when it looked to the defendant’s affidavit and ignored the contrary assertions in the plaintiffs’ affidavit. Id. at 1216. “Particularly where the disputed jurisdictional facts are intimately intertwined with the parties’ dispute on the merits,” Serras observed, “a trial court should not require plaintiffs to mount ‘proof which would, in effect, establish the validity of their claims and their right to the relief sought.’ ” Id. at 1215 (citation omitted, emphasis supplied).
The contrast between Serras and the case at bar is a sharp one. In the instant case the various affidavits can, for the most part, be reconciled with one another. Unless we are to accept allegations made by Mr. Theunissen on “information and belief,” the facts asserted in the plaintiffs’ affidavits are not disputed at all, aside from (1) the question whether Matthews paid the freight on a handful of shipments to consignees other than Weyerhaeuser some months after the accident, and (2) the question as to whose “customers” the consignees were, a subject on which affiant Theunissen did not indicate he was competent to testify. (Affiant Matthews, who clearly was competent to testify, showed that the consignees were not his customers; that showing stands unchallenged.) Far from being “intimately intertwined” with the question of Matthews’ liability for the injury to Mr. Theunissen’s hand, moreover, the jurisdictional facts have nothing whatever to do with the merits of the personal injury claim. Requiring the plaintiffs to mount proof of limited personal jurisdiction over the defendant would in no way require the plaintiffs to establish the validity of their tort claims and their right to the relief sought. Under these circumstances, even if the plaintiffs’ affidavits could appropriately be read as showing, prima fa-cie, grounds for the exercise of limited personal jurisdiction, I do not believe that *1469Serras or cases like it ought to have prevented the district court from deciding the jurisdictional issue on the basis of all five of the affidavits.

. Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986); Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986).