Regular readers of MassTortDefense know that one issue we try to keep an eye on is the exercise of personal jurisdiction over foreign product sellers in the U.S. courts, particularly following the Supreme Court decisions in Nicastro and Goodyear.  Readers may recall from our earlier posts that Nicastro resulted in a plurality opinion which tracked Justice O’Connor’s plurality opinion in Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court of California, 480 U.S. 102 (1987), concurring in the notion that the foreign product manufacturer lacked sufficient minimum contacts to allow a New Jersey court to exercise jurisdiction over it, but concluding that because this case did not present the new and special issues arising from recent changes in commerce and communication, it was unnecessary to get into full analysis of the steam of commerce issue as it might be applied to 21st century marketing. Rather, the outcome of the case could be determined by the Court’s existing precedents, which have held that a single isolated sale, even if accompanied by the kind of sales effort indicated in the record in the case, is not sufficient.

Last Fall, we posted on an Oregon case involving an allegedly defective wheel chair, in which the state court had exercised jurisdiction over the foreign manufacturer. The case arose from a fire allegedly caused by a battery charger manufactured by CTE, a Taiwanese company; the battery charger was incorporated into a motorized wheelchair. Plaintiffs allege that the fire began in the chair, because of a defect in the charger. CTE sought dismissal on the grounds the state court lacked personal jurisdiction. The trial court denied the motion, and the Oregon Supreme Court denied defendant’s petition for a writ of mandamus on the issue. But the Supreme Court granted review, vacated the Oregon opinion denying the manufacturer’s challenge to jurisdiction, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro.

We mused: “On remand, it will be interesting to see what the state court does, given what many observers see as their recent resistant approach on directions from the high Court on remands.”

We now have an answer, as the state court again held that the sale of the battery chargers in Oregon via an Ohio wheelchair manufacturer was sufficient to establish minimum contacts with Oregon, subjecting the foreign company to personal jurisdiction there.  See Willemsen v. Invacare Corp., No. SC S059201 (Ore., 7/19/12).

Plaintiffs relied on the specific jurisdiction branch of personal jurisdiction, which depends on an
affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy, principally, activity or an occurrence that takes place in the forum State and is therefore subject to the State’s regulation. In contrast to general, all-purpose jurisdiction, specific jurisdiction is confined to adjudication of  issues  deriving from, or connected with, the very controversy that establishes jurisdiction.

In this case, plaintiffs argued that the sale of Invacare wheelchairs and CTE battery chargers in Oregon provided sufficient minimum contacts with this state for Oregon courts to assert specific jurisdiction over CTE for injuries that its battery chargers allegedly caused there. One difficult issue in this case arose from the fact that CTE sold its battery chargers to Invacare in Ohio, not Oregon, and with the expectation that Invacare would sell its wheelchairs together with CTE’s battery chargers nationwide, not just Oregon. Defendant contended that, because Invacare (and not CTE) is the one that targeted Oregon, CTE had not purposefully availed itself of the privilege of doing business in Oregon and, as a result, the Oregon courts may not assert jurisdiction over it. The argument was that the the mere fact that it may have expected that its battery chargers might end up in Oregon is not sufficient to give Oregon courts specific jurisdiction over it.

Defendant relied heavily on the Nicastro plurality’s view that the mere fact that it was foreseeable that a defendant’s products might be distributed in one or all of the 50 states was not enough; rather, the plurality would have required evidence that the out-of-state defendant had “targeted” the forum state in some way. But the Oregon court focused on Justice Breyer’s concurring opinion in Nicastro, which it read to mean only that nationwide distribution of a foreign manufacturer’s products is not sufficient to establish jurisdiction over the manufacturer when that effort results in only a single sale in the forum state. In this case, the record showed that, over a two-year period, Invacare sold 1,102 motorized wheelchairs with CTE battery chargers in Oregon. In the court’s view, the sale of over 1,100 CTE battery chargers within Oregon over a two-year period showed a regular flow or regular course of sales in Oregon.

Defendant argued that these sales figures in Oregon were a miniscule fraction — both in sheer numbers, as well as the proportion of end product sales in the forum — of what a Supreme Court
majority would have found to be insufficient in Asahi. But the court concluded that the decision in Asahi “provides little assistance to CTE.”

It would not be a surprise if this case found its way back to the US Supreme Court again.