Court Opinion

ID: 9490875
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:57:19.962716+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:22.208991
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe that the assertion of personal jurisdiction over Mileti 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). Mileti moved to California from Ohio in 1979. Calls and correspondence between Mileti in California and Cole in Ohio took place in 1984, resulting in the subject contract which the parties agreed would be construed in accordance with California law. It was not until 1994 that the plaintiff sought to hold Mileti responsible for breach of contract in Ohio.
International Shoe, the seminal case on the subject of personal jurisdiction, involved an assertion of personal jurisdiction in Washington over a nationwide shoe company based on the allegation that the company was doing business in that state. Jurisdiction over a foreign corporation doing some degree of business within a state involves entirely different jurisdictional considerations than personal jurisdiction over a nonresident individual with few contacts within the forum state. Even a corporation’s conducting a single activity or “isolated items of activities” were not considered to be sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction if it maintained no property, business, or agency in the state. International Shoe, 326 U.S. at 317, 66 S.Ct. at 158-59. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Tryg Int’l Ins. Co., 91 F.3d 790 (6th Cir.1996), also involved a corporate defendant. Nationwide held, among other things, that:
[T]he existence of a contract with a citizen of the forum state, standing alone, will not suffice to confer personal jurisdiction over a foreign defendant. Burger King, 471 U.S. at 478, 105 S.Ct. at 2185. Rather, “prior negotiations and contemplated future consequences, along with the terms of the contract and the parties’ actual course of dealing ... must be evaluated in determining whether the defendant purposefully established minimum contacts within the forum.” Id. at 479, 105 S.Ct. at 2185-86. Further, “[t]he unilateral activity of those who claim some relationship with a nonresident defendant cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum State.” Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 417, 104 S.Ct. 1868, 1873, 80 L.Ed.2d 404 (1984)....
We give plenary review to the district court’s decision regarding personal jurisdiction. CompuServe, Inc. v. Patterson, 89 F.3d 1257, 1261 (6th Cir.1996). Cole bears the burden of establishing jurisdiction over Mile-ti in Ohio. Id. See also American Greetings Corp. v. Cohn, 839 F.2d 1164, 1168 (6th Cir.1988). “[T]he defendant must be amenable to suit under the forum state’s long-arm statute and the due process requirements of the Constitution.” Reynolds v. I.A.A.F., 23 F.3d 1110, 1115 (6th Cir.1994), quoted in CompuServe, 89 F.3d at 1262. This court must examine the limits of the statute and due process.
The majority sets out the tests this court adopts in these situations, but they are usually applied to corporations conducting some modicum of business in the forum state. CompuServe involved an individual conducting an internet business, Flashpoint Development, which placed software on CompuServe’s communications system in Ohio. The agreement in CompuServe provided that Ohio law governed, and defendant “transmitted 32 master software files to CompuServe.” CompuServe, 89 F.3d at 1261. The dispute in the CompuServe case involved deceptive trade practices — ongoing actions, unlike the single transaction involved herein. Therefore, CompuServe does not support the argument that Mileti “should reasonably [have] anticipate[d] being haled into court” in Ohio. Id. at 1263 (quoting Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 474-75, 105 S.Ct. 2174, 2183, 85 L.Ed.2d 528 (1985)). Rather, I believe Mileti’s contacts in Ohio, after his 1979 departure, to have been “attenuated.” Id. Compare Reynolds, 23 F.3d at 1118-21, *439and Health Communications, Inc. v. Manner Corp., 860 F.2d 460, 468-65 (D.C.Cir.1988).
Each ease involving the issue of personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant must be decided on its own facts. Most of the eases we have examined have involved tort claims against nonresident manufacturers or suppliers, or breach of contract claims.
The two related functions of the minimum contacts requirement are that it protects a defendant from the burden of litigating in an inconvenient forum and prevents the states from reaching out, through their courts, “beyond the limits imposed on them by their status as coequal sovereigns in a federal system.” World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 292, 100 S.Ct. 559, 564, 62 L.Ed.2d 490 (1980).
American Greetings, 839 F.2d at 1169.
This is a ease between two individuals. It does not involve an Ohio corporation whose activities with nonresidents may occasion special interests or concerns in Ohio. I would find that Mileti has not been shown by the plaintiff to have any “substantial connection” in or with Ohio, nor that he would have been led “reasonably to believe that he was subjecting himself to the processes of the [Ohio] jurisdiction.” American Greetings, 839 F.2d at 1169.
For the foregoing reasons, I believe personal jurisdiction in Ohio over California resident Mileti offends notions of fairness and equity in this case. Accordingly, I DISSENT because Mileti’s motion to dismiss should have been granted. Plaintiff has simply failed in her burden of proof.