Litigation Tourism Ended In Missouri

If we'd learned about State ex rel. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v. Dolan, No. SC95514, slip op. (Mo. Feb. 28, 2017) ("NSRC"), earlier, this would have been a breaking news post – but make no mistake about it, this is big news. Unanimously, the Missouri Supreme Court has, for all intents and purposes, put an end to Missouri's notorious litigation tourism industry (about a month before the Legislature would have done the same).

NSRC is a railway accident case, not a product liability action, but the jurisdictional facts are familiar to anyone interested in Missouri jurisdiction and venue issues. An out-of-state litigation-tourist, personal-injury plaintiff sued a large out-of-state corporation in Missouri state court (county not stated, but we can guess) over injuries not suffered in Missouri. NSRC, slip op. at 2-3. The Missouri Supreme Court made three major rulings: (1) no general jurisdiction exists over the non-resident corporate defendant because it was not