Jurisdiction (Personal)

• Author: International Law Group

Beverly Anderson, a flight attendant (plaintiff), suffered injuries during a bumpy descent in a Dassault Falcon business jet owned by Amway Corporation. She sued the jet's manufacturer, Dassault Aviation of France (defendant) in an Arkansas federal court.

Dassault Aviation's contacts with Arkansas mainly result from its business relationship with Dassault Falcon Jet (DFJ). DFJ operates a large production site in Arkansas where it completes defendant's jets to individual buyers' specifications.

On defendant's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction over it, the district court ruled that defendant itself was neither present nor doing business in Arkansas. Moreover, DFJ's activities there bore on the jurisdictional inquiry as to the French defendant, only if plaintiff could show that she was entitled to "pierce the corporate veil" and show that defendant's wholly owned subsidiary was actually its "alter ego."

The district court in Arkansas granted Dassault Aviation's motion to dismiss and plaintiff noted her appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reverses.

Arkansas' long-arm statute gives its courts personal jurisdiction over persons and claims to the maximum extent allowed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, the only issue here is whether the due process clause permits an Arkansas court's assertion of personal jurisdiction over Dassault Aviation.

As the precedents require, the appellate court addresses the extent of defendant's contacts with Arkansas, as well as the quality and nature of such contacts. "We think that the district court placed undue reliance on the principle of piercing the corporate veil. Determining the propriety of jurisdiction at a particular place always involves applying principles of fairness and reasonableness to a distinct set of facts, and the determination is not readily amenable to rigid rules that can be applied across the entire spectrum of cases. ..."

"We agree with Ms. Anderson that neither physical presence in Arkansas nor piercing Dassault Falcon Jet's corporate veil is required to establish the minimum contacts necessary for the exercise of personal jurisdiction in Arkansas. Dassault Aviation's establishment of a distribution system in Arkansas, and marketing its products there, are matters that we may appropriately consider in determining whether the...