Trial News

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that Minnesota and Montana state courts may exercise personal jurisdiction over Ford Motor Co. in two cases involving products liability claims against the automaker. The Court reined in the defendant’s attempt to impose a causal link requirement for specific jurisdiction, noting that nothing in its precedent would support such a test. Instead, the Court reiterated its long-standing jurisdiction principles of a defendant “purposefully availing” itself of the forum and the plaintiffs’ claims “arising out of or relating to” the defendant’s activities there. (Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S. Ct. 1017 (Mar. 25, 2021).)

Adam Bandemer was severely injured when the air bag in his 1994 Ford Crown Victoria failed to deploy during a crash, and Markkaya Gullett was killed in a crash involving her 1996 Ford Explorer. The plaintiffs’ claims included design defect, failure to warn, negligence, and breach of warranty. Since Ford is not at home in either state where the plaintiffs were injured, general jurisdiction was not available, and the plaintiffs instead relied on specific jurisdiction and the minimum contacts test to bring their claims. Neither vehicle was purchased directly from Ford in Minnesota or Montana.

In Bandemer, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that Ford had sufficient minimum contacts with the forum to exercise specific jurisdiction and that doing so did not offend fair play and substantial justice under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. (Bandemer v. Ford Motor Co., 931 N.W.2d 744 (Minn. 2019).) In the second case, the Montana Supreme Court focused on the “stream of commerce theory”—that because Ford “purposefully avail[ed] itself of the privilege of conducting activities” in the state, it could be subject to jurisdiction when one of its products injures someone there, so long as that exercise of jurisdiction does not offend due process. (Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 443 P.3d 407 (Mont. 2019).) Both courts rejected Ford’s argument that Bristol Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California (137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017)) and Walden v. Fiore (571 U.S. 277 (2014)) applied to the facts of these cases.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, Ford argued that specific jurisdiction would apply in these cases only if its conduct in the states gave rise to the plaintiffs’ claims—in other words, if there was a causal link between the two. The automaker asserted that for such a causal link to exist, it would have had to design, manufacture, or sell the vehicles at issue in the forum states. Without that causal connection, Ford contended, exercising specific jurisdiction over it would offend due process.

The plaintiffs countered that Ford’s causation argument is not the relevant inquiry for the minimum contacts test and would radically transform well-established principles of specific jurisdiction. AAJ filed an amicus brief (which Public Justice joined) in support of the plaintiffs. The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan, affirmed the state supreme courts’ rulings. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch each filed concurrences, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined in Gorsuch’s concurrence. Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the decision.

The Court rejected the causal link argument outright, explaining that nothing in its case law existed on the need for a connection between a defendant’s activities in a forum and the plaintiff’s claims requiring causation. Its specific jurisdiction test requires that the defendant has “purposefully avail[ed] itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State” and that the plaintiff’s claims “must arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts” there. As the majority notes, the “relate to” language makes it clear that causation does not end the jurisdiction inquiry. It also pointed out that several preceding cases used essentially the same fact pattern as occurred here to illustrate how specific jurisdiction can attach to a defendant company: a plaintiff bringing claims against a global car company that serves the forum state’s market where the plaintiff was injured.

Because Ford has “systematically” served the market in the forum states, claims can be brought against it in those states when its product injures someone. The defendant markets, sells, and services its vehicles in the states; its dealerships buy and sell used vehicles; it engages in widespread advertising; and its dealerships maintain and repair Ford vehicles to encourage consumers to keep buying and driving its cars. In other words, the defendant had “deliberately ‘reached out beyond’ its home” to cultivate a market for its products in the forum states.

All of Ford’s activities in Minnesota and Montana demonstrate a “strong relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation,” which the Court characterized as the “essential foundation” for specific jurisdiction. The defendant thus had fair warning that it could be subject to jurisdiction in these states—the exercise of which would be “so reasonable, it is also predictable,” the majority wrote.

Finally, the Court firmly distinguished the cases at hand from its ruling in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, which the defendant invoked as support for its position. Stating that Ford’s reading of that decision “misses the point,” the Court reiterated the key differences between nonresident plaintiffs in Bristol-Myers and the plaintiffs in the Ford cases: these plaintiffs lived in the forum states, were injured in the forum states, and the defendant’s activities in the forum states related to the plaintiffs’ injuries. Rather, Bristol-Myers “reinforce[s] all we have said about why Montana’s and Minnesota’s courts can decide these cases.” The Court also contrasted Walden with the Ford cases, explaining that it did not support the defendant’s position that a plaintiff’s residence and location of injury cannot support jurisdiction because in Walden, the defendant had no contacts with the forum state.

Washington, D.C., attorney Deepak Gupta, who argued the case for the plaintiffs before the Court, said, “I couldn’t be more thrilled with this victory. It’s been decades since a plaintiff won a personal jurisdiction case in the U.S. Supreme Court. For years, the Court’s decisions, joined by conservative and liberal justices alike, had consistently curtailed jurisdiction over out-of-state corporations. The Ford ruling represents a critical course correction, bringing the law of personal jurisdiction back to the basic principles of fairness and federalism that it’s supposed to serve in the first place. The result will be greater access to justice for injured people.”

Washington, D.C., attorney Robert Peck, who wrote AAJ’s amicus brief, said, “The Ford decision disrupts a trend in the Court’s decade-long campaign to make personal jurisdiction more difficult by recognizing that product manufacturers are subject to suit in the state where the injury took place and where the corporation has a substantial sales presence for that product. It returns the Court to a more commonsense approach that is missing from some recent decisions. Still, no one should entertain the illusion that the contours of personal jurisdiction are settled or that common sense will always prevail.”

*For more on the Ford decision’s impact on personal jurisdiction, tune into AAJ Education’s complimentary webinar, Personal Jurisdiction Webinar: SCOTUS Gives Consumers Access to Justice in Ford Motor Co. Decision, on May 19, 2021, from 2–3:30 p.m. ET. To register, visit https://www.justice.org/resources/events/personal-jurisdiction-comp-webinar.