District courts continue to split on whether to apply the Supreme Court’s holding in Bristol-Myers, a case limiting personal jurisdiction over non-resident multistate mass tort claimants, to the class action context. This issue, which frequently will have significant impact on the size of the proposed class (and thus the defendant’s potential exposure), likely will continue to be hotly contested at the district court level until the appellate courts (and possibly even the Supreme Court) step in to resolve the question once and for all.
In Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017), both resident and non-resident plaintiffs filed suit in California state court against the defendant pharmaceutical company, which was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York. As Bristol-Myers was not “at home” in the state of California, the Supreme Court concluded that California courts lacked personal jurisdiction over the non-resident plaintiffs. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent noted that the majority’s holding left open whether it applied to nationwide class actions, a comment that foretold the subsequent district court split.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Bristol-Myers, district courts have taken two divergent paths: while some courts have applied Bristol-Myers to the class action context and have required that personal jurisdiction exist as to each putative class member, others have distinguished class actions from mass tort litigation and have refused to extend the Court’s reasoning to Rule 23 cases.
Courts applying Bristol-Myers to class actions
Even before Bristol-Myers, the Northern District of Illinois had issued one of the leading decisions refusing to exercise personal jurisdiction over non-resident class members where the class action had been brought outside of the defendant’s “home” forum. In Demeria v. Nissan N. Am., Inc., No. 15 C 3321, 2016 WL 374145, at *8 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 1, 2016), the court held that where the claims of the non-resident class members “remain unrelated to anything that transpired in Illinois, imposing personal jurisdiction for all of the claims because specific jurisdiction may lie as to this one plaintiff’s claims would run afoul of the traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice that form the bedrock of any court’s personal jurisdiction analysis.” See also Demedicis v. CVS Health Corp., No. 16-5973, 2017 WL 569157, at *4-*5 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 13, 2017) (similarly holding, in a pre-Bristol-Myers ruling, that it lacked jurisdiction of claims of non-residents: “Because specific personal jurisdiction is based on claims arising out of a defendant’s conduct within the forum state, this Court has no jurisdiction over claims based on out-of-state consumer fraud laws.”).
Since Bristol-Myers, the Northern District of Illinois consistently has rejected personal jurisdiction over non-resident class members where the defendant did not reside in Illinois. In McDonnell v. Nature’s Way Products, LLC, No. 16 C 5011, 2017 WL 4864910 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 26, 2017), both resident and non-resident plaintiffs brought a nationwide class action in Illinois against the manufacturer of a vitamin supplement. After rejecting the named plaintiffs’ argument that Bristol-Myers should be limited to mass tort claims, the court dismissed the non-resident putative class plaintiffs.
Similarly, in DeBernardis v. NBTY, Inc., No. 17 C 6125, 2018 WL 461228 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 18, 2018), the named plaintiff brought claims on behalf of a nationwide class against a dietary supplement distributor headquartered in New York. Describing the applicability of Bristol-Myers as a “close question,” the court ultimately elected to follow McDonnell and dismissed those claims brought on behalf of non-resident plaintiffs, noting that the concern with forum shopping in Bristol-Myers likewise applied to class actions. Id., 2018 WL 461228, at *2.
And in Practice Management Support Services Inc. v. Cirque du Soleil Inc., No. 14 C 2032, 2018 WL 1255021 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 12, 2018), the court applied Bristol-Myers in denying class certification as to the non-resident putative class members, reasoning...
