Your client has just asked you to commence an action against a corporate entity in a New York state court.  But, the defendant is not incorporated in New York, and does not maintain a principal place of business in New York.  Further, the incident underlying your client’s claim did not occur in New York, nor is the claim connected to the defendant’s specific conduct in New York.  Obtaining specific personal jurisdiction over the foreign corporation is not an option.

The claims, then, may only be brought in New York if the court can exercise general personal jurisdiction over the foreign corporate entity.  But what is the standard for obtaining general personal jurisdiction in New York, and what must be shown?  The Appellate Division, Second Department recently answered these questions in Lowy v Chalkable, LLC (2020 NY Slip Op 04471 [2d Dept Aug. 12, 2020]).

The plaintiffs in Lowy had entered into a joint venture agreement with defendants to purchase and develop websites and web-based companies. Plaintiffs were to provide capital funding, and defendants were to develop and run the websites.  Plaintiffs allegedly provided the funding, but defendants did not perform their obligations under the contract, which included giving plaintiffs equity in the defendant Chalkable, LLC (the “LLC”), a Delaware web-based company allegedly controlled by defendants.

Sometime thereafter, defendant Chalkable, Inc. (the “Corporation”), purchased the LLC, and defendant PowerSchool Group, LLC (“PowerSchool”), purchased the Corporation. Both the Corporation and PowerSchool (the “PowerSchool Defendants”) were formed under the laws of Delaware and have their principal place of business in California.

Plaintiffs sued defendants, asserting claims for breach of contract, declaratory relief, and a constructive trust. The PowerSchool Defendants moved, among other things, pursuant to CPLR § 3211 (a)(8) to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction.  In October 2017, the Queens County Commercial Division (Grays, J.), granted the PowerSchool Defendants’ motion, and Plaintiffs appealed.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed Justice Grays’ decision, finding no basis to impose either general or specific personal jurisdiction over the PowerSchool Defendants.  With respect to the Court’s exercise of general personal jurisdiction, the Court reiterated the general rule that a corporation is subject to general jurisdiction only in the state of the company’s place of incorporation or principal place of business. Citing its prior decision in Aybar v Aybar, 169 AD3d 137 (2d Dept 2019), the Court noted that an exception exists in “an exceptional case” where the defendant’s contacts with New York are “so continuous and systematic, ‘judged against [its] national and global activities, that it is essentially at home’ in th[e] state.”  In the Court’s view, plaintiffs failed to make that showing.

Although the Second Department did not offer a lengthy analysis for its conclusion, its reasoning can be gleaned from the Court’s prior decision in Aybar, as well as the United States Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Daimler AG v Bauman (571 U.S. 117 [2014]).

Daimler

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Daimler, a foreign corporation was amenable to suit in New York under CPLR § 301 only if it engaged in “such a continuous and systematic course of ‘doing business’ here that a finding of its ‘presence’ in this jurisdiction is warranted” (see e.g. Landoil Resources. Corp. v Alexander & Alexander Servs., 77 NY2d 28, 33 [1990], quoting Laufer v Ostrow, 55 NY2d 305, 309–310 [1982]).  Then, in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v Brown (564 US 915 [2011]), the Supreme Court addressed the distinction between general and specific jurisdiction, holding that a court is authorized to exercise general jurisdiction over a foreign corporation when the corporation’s affiliations with the state “are so ‘continuous and systematic’ as to render them essentially at home in the forum State” (id. at 919, quoting International Shoe Co. v Washington, 326 US 310, 317 [1945] [emphasis added]).

In Daimler, the Supreme Court limited the scope of general jurisdiction to that definition, explicitly rejecting a standard that would permit the exercise of general jurisdiction in every state in which a corporation is engaged in a “substantial, continuous, and systematic course of business” (571 US at 137). The Court instructed that the two main bases for exercising general jurisdiction are (i) the place of incorporation, and (ii) the principal place of business (see id.), but left open the possibility of an “exceptional case” where a corporate defendant’s presence in another state is “so substantial and of such a nature as to render the corporation at home in that State” (id. at 139, n. 19 [emphasis added]).

Aybar

After Daimler, the Second Department in Aybar considered whether to exercise general personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation registered to do business in New York,  which had appointed a local agent for service of process.  The plaintiffs in Aybar argued that the defendant, Ford Motor Company (“Ford”), should be subject to the Court’s general jurisdiction because Ford (i) had been authorized to do business in New York since 1920, (ii) operated numerous facilities in New York, (iii) owned property in New York and spent at least $150 million to maintain that property, (iv) employed significant numbers of New York residents, (v) contracted with hundreds of dealerships in New York to sell its products under the Ford brand name, and (vi) had frequently been a litigant in New York courts.  Seems sufficient for a court to exercise general personal jurisdiction, right?

It wasn’t.

Although the plaintiffs pointed to Ford’s factory in New York, employing approximately 600 people, and Ford’s contracts with “hundreds” of dealerships in New York, Ford presented evidence that it had 62 plants, employing about 187,000 people, and 11,980 franchise agreements with dealerships worldwide.  In the Second Department’s view, “appraising the magnitude of Ford’s activities in New York in the context of the entirety of Ford’s activities worldwide, it cannot be said that Ford is at home in New York.”

This brings us back to the Second Department’s decision in Lowy.  There, the Court noted that the Corporation “owns and operates software that facilitates communication in schools and provides educational data management in schools in 50 states, while the education technology platform owned and operated by PowerSchool Group serves millions of users in more than 70 countries.”  As in Aybar, the Second Department considered the entirety of the PowerSchool Defendants’ nationwide and worldwide activities, ultimately concluding that the PowerSchool Defendants’ activities in New York were not so “continuous and systematic” so as to render them “at home” in New York.

Takeaway: 

The fact that a foreign corporation conducts business in New York, standing alone, is insufficient to permit the exercise of general jurisdiction over claims unrelated to any activity occurring in New York.  To determine whether a foreign corporate defendant’s affiliations with the state are so “continuous and systematic” so as to render it essentially “at home” in New York, courts will not focus solely on the defendant’s in-state contacts, but will undertake an appraisal of the defendant’s activities in their entirety, both nationwide and worldwide.   As the United States Supreme Court noted in Daimler, “a corporation that operates in many places can scarcely be deemed at home in all of them.”