Court Opinion

ID: 9532863
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:25:42.45811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:51.766928
License: Public Domain

Hallows, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result but not with the reasoning that the question of due process may be decided as an issue of forum non conveniens. As I understand International Shoe Co. v. Washington (1945), 326 U. S. 310, 66 Sup. Ct. 154, 90 L. Ed. 95, the question of due process goes to the very basis of jurisdiction. In this case, the court was considering the problem of “presence” of a corporation within a state in order to determine in personam jurisdiction. In speaking of the activities of a corporation within the state which would be sufficient, the court said certain minimal contacts must, in fact, exist so that the maintenance of the suit would not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” In re*338ferring to the requirements of due process, the court said, page 317, “Those demands may be met by such contacts of the corporation with the state of the forum as make it reasonable, in the context of our federal system of government, to require the corporation to defend the particular suit which is brought there. An ‘estimate of the inconveniences’ which would result to the corporation from a trial away from its ‘home’ or principal place of business is relevant in this connection,” citing Hutchinson v. Chase & Gilbert (2d Cir. 1930), 45 Fed. (2d) 139. The court also stated, page 319:
“It is evident that the criteria by which we mark the boundary line between those activities which justify the subjection of a corporation to suit, and those which do not, cannot be simply mechanical or quantitative. The test is not merely, as has sometimes been suggested, whether the activity, which the corporation has seen fit to procure through its agents in another state, is a little more or a little less. St. Louis S. W. R. Co. v. Alexander, supra, 228; International Harvester Co. v. Kentucky, supra, 587. Whether due process is satisfied must depend rather upon the quality and nature of the activity in relation to the fair and orderly administration of the laws which it was the purpose of die due-process clause to insure.”
In Hutchinson v. Chase & Gilbert, supra, which introduced the idea of “estimate of the inconveniences,” the court did not say how the inconvenience to the defendant was to be determined or whether there should be a balancing of inconvenience to the defendant and the plaintiff. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, supra, makes the inconvenience to the defendant one of the elements to be considered in determining whether relatively slight contacts with a state are sufficient so that exercise of jurisdiction by the courts of that state fulfil the due-process requirement; otherwise,' *339the test of what will amount to the minimal of contacts is purely a mechanical and quantitative measure rather than the due-process concept of minimal contacts which is the equivalent of jurisdiction.
Judge LeaRned Hand, in his opinion in Kilpatrick v. Texas & P. R. Co. (2d Cir. 1948), 166 Fed. (2d) 788, referred to the two-element theory of presence in stating the issues involving the inconvenient factors were the same as those determined on a plea forum non conveniens. This statement put an erroneous construction on what the United States supreme court said in the International Shoe Case in using the term “estimate of the inconveniences.”
In Latimer v. S/A Industrias Reunidas F. Matarazzo (2d Cir. 1949), 175 Fed. (2d) 184, it was stated that Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert (1947), 330 U. S. 501, 67 Sup. Ct. 839, 91 L. Ed. 1055, and Koster v. Lumbermens Mut. Casualty Co. (1947), 330 U. S. 518, 67 Sup. Ct. 828, 91 L. Ed. 1067, answered any constitutional objection to dispensing altogether with the inconvenience element in determining presence of a corporate defendant for the purpose of jurisdiction of the court because a defendant could relieve himself of any oppressive prejudice by recourse to the plea forum non conveniens. This is curious logic. The Gulf Oil Corp. and the Koster Cases dealt only with the power of a federal court to apply the doctrine of forum non conveniens. Neither case involved a question of jurisdiction and the International Shoe Case was not cited. Latimer excises from the concept of jurisdiction the element of inconvenience to the defendant, which International Shoe makes an inseparable ingredient of minimal contacts, and examines it under the microscope as tissue of forum non conveniens. To try the two issues together, or to determine jurisdiction as if it involved the doctrine of forum non conveniens, can *340only lead, for all practical purposes, to confusion and error. As pointed out by Mr. Justice Jackson in Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, supra, the doctrine of forum non conveniens can never apply if there is an absence of jurisdiction and, on page 506, stated:
“In all cases in which the doctrine of forum non con-veniens comes into play, it presupposes at least two forums in which the defendant is amenable to process; the doctrine furnishes criteria for choice between them.”
I believe Latimer was wrong in stating that for all practical purposes, although admitting a distinction in theory, that the determination of the issue of forum non conveniens determines the jurisdictional issue. Conceding for the sake of argument that the inconvenience to the defendant can be determined out of its relationship to the local activities and to the particular action, the result claimed does not necessarily follow. The inconvenience to the defendant of being sued in the forum may be of such magnitude as not to satisfy due process and would violate traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice, but such inconvenience considered under the broader issue of forum non conveniens may be relatively less than the inconvenience to the plaintiff and other factors taken into consideration in applying such doctrine.
What the trial court did and what the majority opinion approves is to divide the concept of jurisdiction into quantitative local activities and inconvenience, and after determining the local activities were at least minimal by analogy to Huck v. Chicago, St. P., M. & O. R. Co. (1958), 4 Wis. (2d) 132, 90 N. W. (2d) 154, tried the inconvenience issue as if it were raised under the doctrine of forum non conveniens.
However, we would affirm the lower court on the facts because the inconvenience to the defendant of defending this suit, which is for personal injuries sustained in the forum *341allegedly caused by negligence in the operation or maintenance of its boxcar door, bears a reasonable relationship to the defendant’s railroad activities localized in this state and those contacts in that light do not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice to require the defendant to defend the suit in this state. Thus Wisconsin has jurisdiction of the defendant in this action.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Fairchild concurs in this opinion.