Bulkley & Assocs., LLC v. Occupational Safety & Health Appeals Bd.

BULKLEY & ASSOCIATES, LLC v. OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH APPEALS BOARD OFTHE STATE OF CALIFORNIA ET AL.

Civil Action No. 4:18-cv-642

United States District Court EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS SHERMAN DIVISION

June 7, 2019

Judge Mazzant

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

This matter is before the Court on Defendants' Amended Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction (Dkt. #12). Plaintiff, in turn, argues that a California statute waives personal jurisdiction over the California public entities it has sued in Texas—a novel argument courts have yet to address. After careful consideration, the motion will be granted.¹

BACKGROUND

Plaintiff Bulkley & Associates, LLC is a Texas limited liability company that transports refrigerated goods. This can require travelling across state lines. At some point, a Bulkley delivery driver fell out of the back of his truck while driving through Salinas, California. This incident prompted the State of California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health (the "Division") to issue three citations against Bulkley for "(a) fail[ing] to timely report the injury to [the appropriate California agency]; (b) fail[ing] to develop and implement an 'Injury and Illness Prevention Program;' and (c) fail[ing] to require what Californiabelieves is appropriate foot protection for drivers working at customer locations and climbing in and out of refrigerated trailers" (Dkt. #9 at p. 5).

Bulkley appealed the citations to the Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board of the State of California (the "Appeals Board"). Bulkley argued that the Agency "lacked jurisdiction over Bulkley, both as a matter of California statutory law and federal constitutional law," since Bulkley "is not an employer of the State of California, is engaged in interstate commerce, and does not have a place of business in the State of California" (Dkt. #9 at p. 7). But the Appeals Board disagreed and "refused to set these citations aside" (Dkt. #9 at p. 8).

Bulkley subsequently filed a writ of mandamus in the District Court of Hopkins County, Texas 62nd Judicial District (the "Hopkins County District Court") seeking to overturn the Appeals Board decision. The Division and the Agency (collectively, the "California Public Entities") subsequently removed the case to this Court, and now move to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction. They note that this lawsuit concerns public agencies in California issuing citations for the violation of California law after a Bulkley delivery driver was injured on the job while in California.

LEGAL STANDARDS

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2) requires a court to dismiss a claim if the court does not have personal jurisdiction over the defendant. FED. R. CIV. P. 12(b)(2). After a non-resident defendant files a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, it is the plaintiff's burden to establish that in personam jurisdiction exists. Bullion v. Gillespie, 895 F.2d 213, 217 (5th Cir. 1990) (citing WNS, Inc. v. Farrow, 884 F.2d 200, 202 (5th Cir. 1989)).

To satisfy that burden, the party seeking to invoke the court's jurisdiction must "present sufficient facts as to make out only a prima facie case supporting jurisdiction" if a court rules ona motion without an evidentiary hearing. Alpine View Co. v. Atlas Copco AB, 205 F.3d 208, 215 (5th Cir. 2000). When considering the motion to dismiss, "[a]llegations in [a] plaintiff's complaint are taken as true except to the extent that they are contradicted by defendant's affidavits." Int'l Truck & Engine Corp. v. Quintana, 259 F. Supp. 2d 553, 557 (N.D. Tex. 2003) (citing Wyatt v. Kaplan, 686 F.2d 276, 282-83 n.13 (5th Cir. 1982)); accord Black v. Acme Mkts., Inc., 564 F.2d 681, 683 n.3 (5th Cir. 1977). Further, "[a]ny genuine, material conflicts between the facts established by the parties' affidavits and other evidence are resolved in favor of plaintiff for the purposes of determining whether a prima facie case exists." Id. (citing Jones v. Petty-Ray Geophysical Geosource, Inc., 954 F.2d 161, 1067 (5th Cir. 1992)). However, if a court holds an evidentiary hearing, a plaintiff "must establish jurisdiction by a preponderance of the admissible evidence." In re Chinese Manufactured Drywall Prods. Liab. Lit., 742 F.3d 576, 585 (5th Cir. 2014) (citing Walk Haydel & Assocs., Inc. v. Coastal Power Prod. Co., 517 F.3d 235, 241-42 (5th Cir. 2008)).

DISCUSSION

The Parties dispute whether personal jurisdiction exists over this case either based on the California Public Entities' minimum contacts with Texas or pursuant to California Labor Code § 6627, which directs those challenging an Appeals Board decision to file a writ of mandate in "the superior court of the county in which he resides." CAL. LABOR CODE § 6627.

I. The California Statute

Bulkley insists that this Court has personal jurisdiction over the California Public Entities pursuant to California Labor Code § 6627—irrespective of whether minimum contacts exists. See Travelers Indem. Co. v. Calvert Fire Ins. Co., 798 F.2d 826, 834 (5th Cir. 1986) (explaining that "parties can waive lack of personal jurisdiction"). Section 6627 allows:

Any person affected by an order or decision of the appeals board [to] . . . apply to the superior court of the county in which he resides, for a writ of mandate, for the purpose of inquiring into and determining the lawfulness of the original order or decision.

CAL. LABOR CODE § 6627. According to Bulkley, this means that this Court can exercise jurisdiction over the California Public Entities since Bulkley resides in Hopkins County, Texas, which is a part of the Eastern District of Texas.

The Court has been unable to locate cases finding that a state entity has waived personal jurisdiction by statute. But courts have held that, to the extent a statute intends to waive a public entity's sovereign immunity—another jurisdictional requirement—the waiver must be explicit and cannot be inferred.² See Commercial Union Ins. Co. v. United States, 928 F.2d 176, 180 (5th Cir. 1991) (citations omitted) ("Waivers of sovereign immunity must be unequivocally expressed. They must be specific and explicit and cannot be implied by construction of an ambiguous statute."). Applying the standard used in sovereign immunity waivers is especially appropriate here in light of Bulkley's interpretation of Section 6627—which would allow it to file a writ of mandate challenging a California Appeal Board decision in any court in Texas, including its state courts. After all, the United States Supreme Court has found that sovereign immunity protects one state from being sued in another state's courts. See Franchise Tax Bd. of State of Cal. v. Hyatt, 139 S. Ct. 1485, 1492 (2019) (referencing Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410 (1979)) ("We therefore overrule Hall and hold that States retain their sovereign immunity from private suits brought in the courts of other States."). This means that, if this case was still in the Hopkins County DistrictCourt, Bulkley could keep this suit there only if he established that Section 6627 waived the California Public Entities' right to challenge personal jurisdiction and its sovereign immunity to such suits.

Nothing in Section 6627 indicates that California public entities are waiving personal jurisdiction in either this Court or its Texas state court equivalent. To the contrary, California courts have interpreted statutes that designate where a case is filed to be venue statutes—not as ones that vest those courts with jurisdiction. See Newman v. Sonoma Cty., 364 P.2d 850, 850 (1961) ("Except in a few cases in which the Constitution makes the place of trial jurisdictional (see art. VI, § 5) or a statute makes a local place of trial part of the grant of subject matter jurisdiction, venue is not jurisdictional.").³

Section 6627 would not provide either this Court or the Hopkins County District Court personal jurisdiction over Bulkley's writ of mandate even if that statute did confer jurisdiction on the courts it references. This is evident from the text of the statute. Section 6627 allows writs of mandates to be filed against California Public Entities only in "the superior court of the county in which [an interested party] resides." CAL. LABOR CODE § 6627 (emphasis added). Bulkley interprets this to mean that writs of mandate challenging decisions from the Agency can be brought in any trial court where it resides. But in several states, including Texas, lower courts are not referred to as superior courts. Nor are federal district courts. As a result, if Section 6627 was meant to apply to all lower courts—rather than California's superior courts—the California legislature would have said so. After all, the California legislature uses the phrase "superior court"in several other provisions that plainly apply only to California's lower courts—such as California's general venue statute, CAL. CIV. P. § 395, a procedural statute that cannot apply in federal courts. See Thoroughbred Ventures, LLC v. Disman, No. 4:18-cv-318, 2018 WL 3472717, at *2 (E.D. Tex. July 19, 2018) (citing Gasperini v. Ctr. For Humanities, Inc., 518 U.S. 415, 417 (1996) (explaining that, under the Erie doctrine, "federal courts apply state common law but federal procedural rules"). Tellingly, Bulkley has not cited a single case in which a writ of mandate has been filed under Section 6627 outside of California's superior courts. Nor has the Court been able to find one.

Section 6627's exclusive applicability to California's superior courts is also evident from the statute's legislative history. The California Supreme Court made writs of mandate available to review California administrative decisions in the first place because the California Constitution charges California courts with the sacred role of checking the power of the state's other branches of government. See Bisby v. Pierno, 481 P.2d 242, 242 (Cal. 1971) (emphasis added).⁴ It follows that Section...