The Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument Tuesday (today) on Bristol-Myers Squibb v. Superior Court and BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell, enabling it to revisit its line of cases (especially Daimler AG v. Bauman, 2014) setting limits to state court jurisdiction. The recommendation in my new Cato piece: “for a united Court to say unambiguously, about its Daimler holding: we said it, and we meant it.”
More resources on the cases: SCOTUSBlog argument previews on Bristol-Myers and BNSF; Washington Legal Foundation on Bristol and BNSF; coverage of the Plavix mass litigation, of which the Bristol-Myers case is an outgrowth, in American Pharmacy News and by Sidley Austin associate Julia Zousmer in the Illinois Law Review. Earlier on Daimler here, here, etc. A case this term that presents entirely different legal issues, but also relates to forum-shopping, is the patent venue case T.C. Heartland v. Kraft Foods.
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Dragging civil defendants into distant, plaintiff-friendly courts as readily as Chinese dissidents are dragged out of bed in the middle of the night plainly violates due process.