Stangenberg v. Ibrahim

MARIAM STANGENBERG v. ELHAMY IBRAHIM

No. 1627

COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND

September Term, 2019

July 7, 2021

Circuit Court for Baltimore City

Case No. 24-C-19-002791

UNREPORTED

Nazarian, Beachley, Zic, JJ.

Opinion by Nazarian, J.

* This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.

Mariam Stangenberg sued Elhamy Ibrahim in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City in connection with a sexual assault that, she alleged, occurred while Ms. Stangenberg and her daughter were visiting Mr. Ibrahim in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She stated in her complaint that Mr. Ibrahim had been and remained a resident of Baltimore City, and that his property interests and the business he conducted in Baltimore supported the exercise of general personal jurisdiction over him there.

Mr. Ibrahim filed a Preliminary Motion to Dismiss Complaint for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction, arguing that he was domiciled in South Carolina and had been a resident there since his retirement five years before the alleged incident. The circuit court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint on the ground that Mr. Ibrahim's contacts with Maryland were not sufficiently continuous to justify the exercise of general personal jurisdiction. We vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings, beginning with the opportunity for Ms. Stangenberg to conduct discovery on Mr. Ibrahim's remaining connections to Maryland.

I. BACKGROUND

Ms. Stangenberg and Mr. Ibrahim had been social friends for ten years. In May 2016, Mr. Ibrahim invited Ms. Stangenberg and her daughter to visit him in South Carolina, after the daughter had become upset and depressed after breaking up with her boyfriend. While in Mr. Ibrahim's home, Ms. Stangenberg alleged that she was sexually assaulted by him while her daughter was out of the house on a run. She returned immediately to Maryland, went to a local hospital, and reported the incident.

On May 9, 2019, Ms. Stangenberg filed a complaint against Mr. Ibrahim that included claims for battery, assault, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She alleged that Mr. Ibrahim was a resident of Baltimore City and that his home in South Carolina was a summer home. She alleges further that Mr. Ibrahim has substantial property interests in Baltimore, maintains his principal place of business there, operates multiple rental apartments and commercial rental units in Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland, and derives substantial income from these properties.

Mr. Ibrahim responded with a Preliminary Motion to Dismiss Complaint for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction under Maryland Rule 2-322(a). The motion argued that his South Carolina house was Mr. Ibrahim's primary residence and that he had been a resident there since June 2011. At the time of the alleged assault in May 2016, he contended, he owned four properties in Baltimore. The first property is a parking lot located at 311 Tyson Street that is to remain an empty lot due to zoning laws. The second property is a building located at 212 W. Saratoga Street, which served as Mr. Ibrahim's primary residence until June 2011, when he moved to South Carolina. Since 2009, Mr. Ibrahim has had one tenant on the second floor of the building. The third property is a building located at 304 Park Avenue, in which a daycare operated until 2016 and since then has been unoccupied. The fourth property, located at 213/215 W. Saratoga Street, was owned by Mr. Ibrahim at the time of the alleged assault, but he sold it on December 1, 2017. He also acknowledged that he holds promissory notes for the outstanding balance on the 213/215 Saratoga Street property as well as for a property located at 211 W. Saratoga Street that he sold inDecember 2008. He argued that these contacts were insufficient to support the exercise of general personal jurisdiction against him.

Ms. Stangenberg opposed the motion, and the circuit court held a hearing on September 13, 2019. On September 16, 2019, the circuit court issued an order granting the motion, finding that the court could not exercise jurisdiction over Mr. Ibrahim, and dismissing the case. Ms. Stangenberg filed a timely notice of appeal. We supply additional facts as necessary below.

II. DISCUSSION

Ms. Stangenberg raises two questions on appeal.¹ First, she argues that the circuit court erred when it found that Mr. Ibrahim lacked minimum contacts with the State of Maryland to support personal jurisdiction under Maryland's Long Arm Statute, Maryland Code (1973, 2020 Repl. Vol.), § 6-103(b)(4) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article ("CJ"). Second, even if she failed to make a prima facie case of personal jurisdiction, she contends that the circuit court abused its discretion in failing to allow her to conduct limited discovery on that issue. We agree with her that the court erred in granting the motion to dismiss without allowing her an opportunity to conduct discovery on personal jurisdiction.

All of the defenses listed in Maryland Rule 2-322(a), including personal jurisdiction, are collateral to the merits and raise questions of law. Beyond Sys., Inc. v. Realtime GamingHolding Co., 388 Md. 1, 11-12 (2005) (citing Paul V. Niemeyer & Linda Shuett, Maryland Rules Commentary 205 (3d ed. 2003)). Accordingly, we review de novo the circuit court's decision to grant Mr. Ibrahim's motion to dismiss. See Bond v. Messerman, 391 Md. 706, 718 (2006) ("The applicable standard of appellate review of the grant of a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction is whether the trial court was legally correct in its decision to dismiss the action . . . ."); see also Livingston v. Naylor, 173 Md. App. 488, 493 (2007). "In conducting our analysis, we [] 'accept all well-pled facts in the complaint, and reasonable inferences drawn from them, in a light most favorable to the non-moving party . . . .'" Gosain v. County Council for Prince George's Cnty., 178 Md. App. 90, 95 (2008) (quoting Sprenger v. Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 400 Md. 1, 21 (2007)). Dismissal is "proper only if the alleged facts and permissible inferences, so viewed, would, if proven, nonetheless fail to afford relief to the plaintiff." Bobo v. State, 346 Md. 706, 709 (1997) (citing Morris v. Osmoje Wood Preserving, 340 Md. 519, 531 (1995)).

We review the denial of discovery for abuse of discretion, which occurs "where no reasonable person would take the view adopted by the trial court or when the court acts without reference to any guiding rules or principles." In re Adoption/Guardianship No. 3598, 347 Md. 295, 312 (1997) (cleaned up). "An abuse of discretion may also be found where the ruling under consideration is 'clearly against the logic and effect of facts and inferences before the court.'" Id. (quoting North v. North, 102 Md. App. 1, 13 (1994)).

The circuit court granted Mr. Ibrahim's motion to dismiss after finding that his contacts with the State of Maryland and the City of Baltimore were not sufficientlycontinuous to justify general jurisdiction. Ms. Stangenberg challenges this finding and the court's decision not to allow her an opportunity to take discovery in support of jurisdiction. We agree on the latter point and, after a remand for limited discovery relating to jurisdiction, Ms. Stangenberg should have an opportunity to attempt to establish general personal jurisdiction over Mr. Ibrahim using a complete record.

A. Mr. Ibrahim Probably Is Domiciled In South Carolina.

At the threshold, Ms. Stangenberg contends that Mr. Ibrahim remains domiciled in Baltimore City. If this were true, she wins the appeal—a Maryland resident is subject to general personal jurisdiction here. She argued in the circuit court that before the alleged incident Mr. Ibrahim represented to her that he maintained his residence in Baltimore and that his home in South Carolina was a summer residence. He disputes this and asserts that he has been a South Carolina resident since his retirement in June 2011. The circuit court agreed with Mr. Ibrahim.

A person can live and work in multiple places, but each person can have only one domicile. Under the "longstanding view on determining a person's domicile," Oglesby v. Williams, 372 Md. 360, 372 (2002), courts determine the person's domiciliary intent by looking more to concrete manifestations of residency than what they say:

The words reside or resident mean domicile unless a contrary intent is shown. A person may have several places of abode or dwelling, but he can have only one domicile at a time. Domicile has been defined as the place with which an individual has a settled connection for legal purposes and the place where a person has his true, fixed, permanent home, habitation and principal establishment, without any present intention of removing therefrom, and to which place he has,whenever he is absent, the intention of returning. The controlling factor in determining a person's domicile is his intent. One's domicile, generally, is that place where he intends to be. The determination of his intent, however, is not dependent upon what he says at a particular time, since his intent may be more satisfactorily shown by what is done than by what is said. Once a domicile is determined or established a person retains his domicile at such place unless the evidence affirmatively shows an abandonment of that domicile. In deciding whether a person has abandoned a previously established domicile and acquired a new one, courts will examine and weigh the factors relating to each place. This Court has never deemed any single circumstance conclusive. However, it has viewed certain factors as more important than others, the two most important being where a person actually lives and where he votes. Where a person lives and votes at the same place such place probably will be determined to

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