The Forgotten Property Right

With its move to the “at home” standard in Goodyear, Daimler, and BNSF, the Supreme Court significantly restricted the exercise of general personal jurisdiction over nonresident corporation defendants. This restriction offers questionable actual benefits to corporate defendants, but its rigid focus on defendant’s rights has impacted the ability of certain plaintiffs to bring a cause of action against those defendants. Because the at home standard infringes on this group of plaintiffs’ ability to assert their property right of redress in violation of the Due Process Clauses of the Constitution (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments), the Court should return to the previous “continuous and systematic contacts” standard developed under International Shoe. Hundreds of articles have been written in the four years since Daimler erased fifty years of general personal jurisdiction jurisprudence. But because personal jurisdiction analysis is traditionally defendant focused, there is little mention of the plaintiff’s property right in access to the courts in that literature. Personal jurisdiction rules should protect a defendant’s interests, but not to the total forfeiture of a plaintiff’s property right. Recognizing the at home standard as a misstep would resolve this constitutional conflict.