Awaiting Answers On A Post-Bristol-Myers Class Question

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its seminal personal jurisdiction ruling in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California.¹ BMS held that state courts cannot exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants as to plaintiffs whose claims arose out of state.

The ruling made clear that this fundamental rule applies even when, as was the case in BMS, the state court is presiding over nationwide mass tort actions involving substantially similar claims by in-state plaintiffs against the same out-of-state defendants. Although the decision has reined in plaintiffs lawyers' forum-shopping efforts to manufacture personal jurisdiction by joining the claims of resident plaintiffs with those of nonresidents in state court in mass tort proceedings, its applicability to class actions — which sometimes also seek to group the claims of in- and out-of-state plaintiffs against out-of-state defendants — was left an open question.²