2016 Mitigating Risk: Key Litigation Developments Commercial Litigation: Procedural Issues >> Jurisdiction Test For Foreign Defendants Continues To Narrow

In recent years, the century-old standard allowing courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants by showing that they were "doing business" in a forum state has been substantially limited.

Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 ruling in Daimler AG v. Bauman, courts required foreign defendants to maintain "minimum contacts" with a forum state, such that bringing the lawsuit in that state did not "offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice." Accordingly, it had been established law in the Second Circuit, which includes federal courts in New York, that courts had general jurisdiction over a foreign corporation engaged in a "continuous and systematic course of doing business in New York" — by, for example, maintaining an office or employees in New York — regardless of whether the cause of action was related in some way to those activities.