Re: Personal jurisdiction (was: DEC vs AltaVista)

Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Robert Cumbow <cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com> wrote:
> >
> > No issue of personal jurisdiction appears to have been raised. Even
> > in the Tennessee case, Thomas did not challenge Tennessee
> > jurisdiction, only the application of Tennessee community standards
> > to determine whether images on a BBS in California were obscene. I
> > believe that in both cases jurisdiction was founded on the existence
> > of substantial transactions between Thomas and a resident of the
> > forum state, which transactions involved violation of federal law.
>
> Since this was a federal case, any jurisdictional issue would have
> been founded on whether the Thomases had the requisite contacts with
> the United States. They obviously did, so any contest on
> jurisdictional grounds would have been a dead-bang loser.

This is not necessarily true, unless the federal statute on which the claim is based has a nationwide service of process provision. In the Omni case, 484 U.S. 97 (1987) the Court said that the district court did not have jurisdiction over a case under the Commodity Exchange Act, because the Act had no nationwide service of process provision. Therefore, the Court said, the plaintiff would have to demonstrate jurisdiction under the state long-arm, which it failed to do.

Sandra Greiner
sg1[_at_]ix.netcom.com Received on Mon Jun 09 1997 - 14:57:58 GMT