Pennsylvania – Going Off The Jurisdictional Deep End?

We've already unloaded on Hammons v. Ethicon, Inc., ___ A.3d ___, 2018 WL 3030754 (Pa. Super. June 19, 2018), where the court made a virtually unprecedented holding that a defendant challenging personal jurisdiction on Due Process grounds had the burden of proof in the course of allowing a litigation tourist from Indiana to stay in Pennsylvania, based on "contacts" that had no causal relationship to that plaintiff's injuries. Hammons involved high profile mass tort litigation, and we're sure the story there is far from over.

Now there's Webb-Benjamin, LLC v. International Rug Group, LLC, ___ A.3d ___, 2018 WL 3153602 (Pa. Super. June 28, 2018), a small commission dispute case involving a single event in Canada. Heck, the non-resident defendant was not even registered in Pennsylvania until after the events in question. Id. at *1. In Webb-Benjamin, another panel of the same court has ruled that a corporation's mere act of registering to do business in Pennsylvania