CEB has my article “Specific Jurisdiction May Be Based on Past Contacts with Forum, Says 9th Circuit Panel over Judge VanDyke Dissent”

Tim Kowal December 15, 2023

CEB DailyNews has published my article, “Specific Jurisdiction May Be Based on Past Contacts with Forum, Says 9th Circuit Panel over Judge VanDyke Dissent.” The article is about Impossible Foods Inc. v. Impossible X LLC, No. 21-16977 (9th Cir. Sep. 12, 2023), where the district court had ruled that, in a lawsuit involving trademark enforcement, Impossible X’s contacts with California had to relate to trademark enforcement. But a divided 9th Circuit panel reversed, holding that the court may look to the defendants’ general business-development historical contacts with the forum—even if those activities did not relate to enforcing the trademark, the subject of the lawsuit.

This was too much for Judge VanDyke, who dissented, saying that the majority “reconceptualizes specific jurisdiction as a kind of backward-looking "general jurisdiction lite," [and] pushes our precedent in a new and troubling direction.” He also says the majority’s rule “is also potentially the most radical reimagining and expansion of specific jurisdiction in decades.”

The original article is here.

Kowal-Specific-Jurisdiction Download

Tim Kowal is an appellate specialist certified by the California State Bar Board of Legal Specialization. Tim helps trial attorneys and clients win their cases and avoid error on appeal. He co-hosts the Cal. Appellate Law Podcast at CALpodcast.com, and publishes summaries of cases and appellate tips for trial attorneys. Contact Tim at [email protected] or (949) 676-9989.

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CEB has my article “Specific Jurisdiction May Be Based on Past Contacts with Forum, Says 9th Circuit Panel over Judge VanDyke Dissent”

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"A judge is a law student who grades his own papers." — H.L. Mencken

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." — Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"Upon putting laws into writing, they became even harder to change than before, and a hundred legal fictions rose to reconcile them with reality." — Will Durant

"It may be that the court is thought to be excessively legalistic. I should be sorry to think that it is anything else." — Hon. Sir Owen Dixon, Chief Justice of Australia

"Moot points have to be settled somehow, once they get thrust upon us. If an assertion cannot be proved, then it must be settled some other way, and nearly all of these ways are unfair to somebody." —T.H. White, The Once and Future King

"At common law, barratry was 'the offense of frequently exciting and stirring up suits and quarrels' (4 Blackstone, Commentaries 134) and was punished as a misdemeanor." — Rubin v. Green (1993) 4 Cal.4th 1187

Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly. — Leviticus

"God made the angels to show Him splendor, … Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind." — Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons