Keywords
Due process, Supreme Court, Agency, Subsidiary, International law, Corporate law, Forum Shopping, Contacts, "at home" standard
Abstract
The Due Process Clause requires a court to have jurisdiction over a lawsuit before binding the parties to its judgment. However, before 2014, the Supreme Court had not addressed whether a court could impute a subsidiary's contacts to its parent corporation for jurisdictional purposes. Because of this oversight, the Courts of Appeals split over how to impute a subsidiary's contacts. Some courts apply the agency test, while other courts apply variations of the alter ego test. As a result, courts inconsistently asserted jurisdiction over multinational corporations, leading plaintiffs to forum shop and corporations to speculate which forums might assert jurisdiction over them. Fortunately, the Supreme Court in Daimler AG v. Bauman resolved the split in favor of a restricted approach to imputing contacts-the "at home" standard. This Comment will describe the facts of the case and dissect the Court's holding. It will then explore the holding's effects on general jurisdiction, the litigation environment, the United States economy, and the Nation's international affairs. By analyzing the holding's likely impact, this Comment ultimately concludes that the Supreme Court's decision was the correct one. Despite having adopted the correct standard, this Comment acknowledges that this jurisdictional issue will come before the Court again due to the Court's lack of guidance in the application of the "at home" standard.
Recommended Citation
Stephanie Denker,
The Future of General Jurisdiction: The Effects of Daimler AG v. Bauman,
20 Fordham J. Corp. & Fin. L. 145
(2014).
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/jcfl/vol20/iss1/4