Civil
Procedure Class Notes
We
finished up last time with Dee-K as a case. The main thing we got out of it was the fact
that different provisions of the venue statutes may
apply to different defendants.
Why
venue?
Why
do we have venue? Stevie Y. thinks this
is a good question. What’s the need to
have a separate statute that just seems to mirror personal jurisdiction? It helps select where a case can be properly
brought. Isn’t that precisely what personal
jurisdiction does?
Fairman
says we do it because it’s the law! “There’s
a statute, so we have to follow it.”
But
Yeazell has a point: if we eliminated venue altogether, we wouldn’t have too
many problems since personal jurisdiction is pretty well-developed.
Where
does venue fit into our decision tree of jurisdiction? What about notice and forum non conveniens? Are they preliminary matters, or matters to
be determined after the jurisdictional analysis? Fairman says that it doesn’t matter much.
He
says that venue will almost always come after jurisdiction because no jurisdiction
usually means no venue either. In other
words, the venue test often collapses into the tests for personal jurisdiction.
What
about notice? There is constitutional
notice, but there are also state and federal service rules.
What’s
the factual background? “This is a superb
case to end this unit on because it’s absolutely chock-full of neat
stuff related to procedure.”
A
plane full of Scots crash in
What
other companies were involved? There are
some companies in
We
start out in
Why
is the
Is
there any connection to the
This
is a classic case of forum shopping!
The plaintiffs’ attorneys specialize in looking for plane crashes all
over the world and litigating them in the
A
catalog of strategic maneuvers
The
defense lawyers make three brilliant procedural moves:
1. The defendants
removed the case from state court to federal court under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1441-52. Removal is something the defendants do when
the claim is something over which federal courts would have original jurisdiction.
Why did the plaintiffs file this lawsuit
in state court instead of federal court?
We know that the plaintiffs are forum shopping. But both courts will apply the same law. What is so great about state court? In World-Wide, the
composition of the
2. The defendants
won a transfer from federal district court in California to district court in Pennsylvania
under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). There is broad authority for a federal
district court to move a case to another other district where the case could
have been brought.
3. The defendants
move for dismissal based on forum non conveniens under 28 U.S.C. § 1406. They win!
The case goes to Scotland.
The
case started in
So
this is procedurally complicated! It’s
exciting!
What
did the Third Circuit do wrong, according to the Supreme Court? The Third Circuit reversed on the ground that
the law would be less favorable to the plaintiffs in
The
Gilbert balancing test
This
is the black letter law of forum non conveniens. It weighs “private” and “public” factors.
The
private factors are:
1. Relative ease
of access to proof
2. Availability
of witness subpoenas
3. Cost of
getting witnesses
4. Possibility of
view of premises if called for
The
public factors are:
1. Court
congestion
2. Local interest
in having local controversies decided at “home”
3. Forum
familiarity with substantive law
4. Unfairness of
burdening citizens with jury duty for case unrelated to forum
This
is similar to the “five factor” test for “fair play” that comes out of World-Wide. Notice that Gilbert is a really old
case. It’s from 1947.
Next
time, we’ll start talking about the choice of law issue. Keep mentally in touch with Piper.
[1] Notice that the defendants did not challenge jurisdiction at this point, or really at any other point.