A United States district court in Illinois recently granted a
non-resident defendant's motion to strike the class definition
in a putative nationwide TCPA class action, pursuant to
Bristol-Meyers Squibb, broadly holding that due process
"bars nationwide class actions in fora where the defendant is
not subject to general jurisdiction." The case is Mussat
v. IQVIA Inc., Case No. 17-cv-8841 (N.D. Illinois), and a copy
of the order can be accessed here.
This case joins the growing list of district courts that
continue to wrestle with the question of whether they can exercise
personal jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant with respect to
the claims of out-of-state putative class members. In
Bristol-Meyers – a mass tort action, not a class
action – the Supreme Court determined that exercise of
personal jurisdiction over claims asserted by non-residents
violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
