Professor Howard Erichson appeared in a Bloomberg Law article discussing a jurisdictional rule that would limit the ability of workers and consumers to bring class-action lawsuits against national or international corporations.
Corporations could only face nationwide or multistate class actions in the state where they’re headquartered or incorporated under the rule the companies want. Those home forums are where federal courts have the authority, known as general jurisdiction, to consider claims against the companies. In cases brought only in those states, establishing a court’s “personal jurisdiction” over the employers with respect to out-of-state plaintiffs’ claims isn’t necessary.
Imposing such a jurisdictional rule would be a major setback for workers, consumers, and other class action plaintiffs, legal scholars told Bloomberg Law. Foreign companies that aren’t incorporated in the U.S. would become very resistant to nationwide or multistate class actions, since they typically don’t have a home forum, scholars said. Plaintiffs could lose the ability to choose courts with favorable case law for class actions larger than a single state, they said.
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The companies pushing for the jurisdictional restriction on unnamed class members are trying to build from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling in Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Ct. of Cal. That 8-1 decision said each plaintiff who’s part of a state-court lawsuit with aggregated individual claims—but isn’t a class action—must establish that the court has personal jurisdiction over the defendant with respect to their claims. Otherwise, a defendant’s Fourteenth Amendment due process rights would be violated, the court said.That meant Bristol-Myers, which was sued in California over alleged harm caused by one of its prescription drugs, didn’t have to face tort claims from the plaintiffs who didn’t assert they were injured by that drug in California or had any other connection to the state.
“The day after Bristol-Myers was decided, it was obvious to everyone that the next question was whether it applies to class actions,” said Howard Erichson, a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in civil procedure.