So, in our last lesson, we saw how International Shoe solved a problem. So in situations where a court couldn't establish personal jurisdiction over the defendant via Pennoyer, International Shoe gave the courts another way to obtain personal jurisdiction, in particular, by looking at the defendant's contacts with the forum state. And International Shoe said one of the things we care about is whether the defendant has what we call "continuous and systematic contact" with the forum.

The court even then went on to say you could have a defendant who has so much contact with the state, we might not even be all that concerned with whether those contacts are related to the suit at hand. The court would later refer to this kind of personal jurisdiction as "general jurisdiction" or "all-purpose jurisdiction."

And the notion is that you could have so much contact with a state that you could be sued for anything in that state, and it would still be fair. A state court or federal court in that state would generally have jurisdiction over you, hence the phrase "general jurisdiction."

Now, having said that, we should ask, "Well, courts in what states are actually going to have this kind of all-purpose jurisdiction over you?" In a few cases, one called Goodyear and then one called Daimler, the court made clear that the answer is very, very few. Let's do a quick refresher on Goodyear.

At Home - Goodyear

So this is a really sad case that involved a bus accident that happened in France. And we have two young boys from North Carolina who were killed when a Goodyear tire ended up failing, and that caused the bus that they were riding on to crash. So the boys' parents decided that they were going to sue Goodyear USA, as well as three European Goodyear subsidiaries.

Now, Goodyear USA didn't dispute personal jurisdiction. The question, though, for the court was whether there would be jurisdiction in North Carolina over these foreign subsidiaries. So you might be thinking, "Well, what were their contacts to the state of North Carolina?" Well, it turned out that some tires that they manufactured and sold were distributed within North Carolina by other Goodyear USA affiliates.

They were typically custom-ordered tires for like really big, heavy vehicles. So not even, in fact, the kind of tire that was involved in the accident that happened in France. And it turns out only a small percentage of their tires ended up in North Carolina at all. So the court looked at all these facts and said, "Yeah, that is just not enough. We don't have enough contacts between those foreign subsidiaries and the state of North Carolina for North Carolina to now have general jurisdiction over those defendants."

And then the court went a little bit further and said, "To get general jurisdiction over a corporation or an individual, that corporation or individual needs to really be at home there." That was the big phrase. You have to be at home in that jurisdiction for general jurisdiction to be possible.

Really at Home - Daimler

And, in fact, we later got this kind of doubled down by the Supreme Court in a case called Daimler. If the defendant is an individual, a person, the paradigm forum for the exercise of general jurisdiction is that person's domicile, basically the individual's permanent home. It's a little bit different if we're talking about a corporation. For corporations, we actually look to two separate places where we would consider the defendant to be at home.

First, we have the corporation's state of incorporation. I like to think about this as the state in which they were born. And then second, we look to the corporation's principal place of business. That is a term of art. That doesn't actually mean that we look to the state in which they're making the most sales, for example.

Basically, we're talking about the place where they have their headquarters, kind of like their nerve center. So what this means is that if a corporation is incorporated, say, in Delaware, and then it has its principal place of business in New York, courts in both states will have general jurisdiction over it.

And that's really important. That means that you could sue that corporation for anything in either of those places. Now, the only thing to keep in mind is that every once in a while, you'll find a corporation that's incorporated in a state and has its principal place of business in that same state. So what's an example?

Starbucks happens to be incorporated in the state of Washington and it has its principal place of business in Washington as well. It means that it's only going to be subject to general jurisdiction in the state of Washington.

Recap

That's a little bit about general jurisdiction. You can be sued for anything, anything at all, in the state that has general jurisdiction over you. Again, if you're a person, we're talking about where you're domiciled. If you're a corporation, it's the state of incorporation and the principal place of business. I'm domiciled in North Carolina, so I could go and cause an accident in New York, and we'll talk in a minute about whether I could get sued in New York for that accident, but for sure you could sue me for that accident in North Carolina. You can sue me for anything at all where there's general jurisdiction.

So, for our next lesson, we're going to pivot a little bit and talk about specific jurisdiction.