Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1990

Burnham v. Superior Court of Cal., County of Marin

495 U.S. 604 | 110 S. Ct. 2105 | 109 L. Ed. 2d 631 | 1990 U.S. LEXIS 2700 | 58 U.S.L.W. 4629

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Takeaway

In short, this case preserves transient, or "tag," jurisdiction: a State may generally exercise personal jurisdiction over a nonresident who is voluntarily present and personally served there, even for a claim unrelated to the visit.

Background

Dennis Burnham and his wife married in West Virginia, lived in New Jersey, and had two children. After they separated in 1987, Mrs. Burnham moved to California with the children. Although the couple had discussed an uncontested California divorce based on irreconcilable differences, Mr. Burnham later filed a New Jersey divorce action alleging desertion but neither obtained a summons nor served his wife.

Mrs. Burnham then filed for divorce in California. While Mr. Burnham was temporarily in California—first on business and then to visit his children—he was personally served with a California summons and divorce petition when he returned one child to Mrs. Burnham's home. He returned to New Jersey and made a special appearance in California to challenge personal jurisdiction.

The California Superior Court denied his motion to quash service, and the California Court of Appeal denied mandamus relief. The state courts held that a nonresident's physical presence in California and personal service there were a sufficient basis for in personam jurisdiction, even though the divorce action did not arise from his California activities.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Due Process Clause permits California to exercise personal jurisdiction over a nonresident personally served while voluntarily and temporarily present in the State, when the suit is unrelated to his forum activities.

Holding

Yes. Personal service on Burnham during his voluntary physical presence in California constitutionally supported California's jurisdiction over him.

Reasoning

Justice Scalia's plurality opinion treated in-state personal service, often called transient jurisdiction or "tag" jurisdiction, as one of the most deeply rooted and continuously accepted bases of personal jurisdiction in American law. At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, courts widely recognized that a state could exercise jurisdiction over a person found and personally served within its borders, even if the person's visit was brief and the claim arose elsewhere.

The plurality concluded that this settled and continuing tradition itself satisfies the International Shoe formulation of due process: jurisdiction must comport with "traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice." Physical presence was the historical touchstone from which modern minimum-contacts doctrine developed, so it would be backwards to use that doctrine to invalidate jurisdiction based on the very physical presence it was designed to supplement.

The Court therefore affirmed without requiring California to show that Burnham had continuous and systematic contacts with the State or that the divorce litigation arose from his California conduct. Burnham voluntarily entered California and was properly served there; under the longstanding rule, that was enough.

Issue #2

Whether International Shoe requires a minimum-contacts and claim-relatedness analysis when a defendant is personally served while physically present in the forum State.

Holding

No. The plurality read International Shoe's minimum-contacts requirement as governing absent defendants, not defendants personally served while present in the forum.

Reasoning

International Shoe relaxed Pennoyer's former territorial limits by allowing jurisdiction over defendants who were not physically present in the forum, provided that their forum contacts made suit consistent with fair play and substantial justice. In the plurality's view, minimum contacts function as a substitute for physical presence; they do not displace physical presence as an independently sufficient traditional ground of jurisdiction.

Nothing in the Court's post-International Shoe cases, the plurality said, held that actual in-state service became insufficient unless the suit also related to the defendant's forum contacts. Those cases addressed the constitutionality of jurisdiction over absent defendants, usually where the state relied on the defendant's business activities or other contacts instead of personal service within the State.

Issue #3

Whether Shaffer v. Heitner required California to evaluate transient jurisdiction under International Shoe's minimum-contacts standard.

Holding

No. The plurality held that Shaffer concerned an absent defendant and quasi in rem jurisdiction based on property, not personal service on a defendant physically present in the forum.

Reasoning

Shaffer rejected the use of property located in a state as a fictional basis for deciding an absent owner's personal obligations when the property was unrelated to the litigation. The plurality understood Shaffer to require that quasi in rem jurisdiction be treated like other jurisdiction over absent defendants and therefore be tested under International Shoe.

The plurality rejected Burnham's reliance on Shaffer's statement that all assertions of state-court jurisdiction must be evaluated under International Shoe. Read in context, that statement eliminated the distinction between in personam and quasi in rem jurisdiction for absent defendants; it did not erase the historically distinct rule allowing jurisdiction over a person served while physically present in the State.

The plurality acknowledged that Shaffer had independently assessed whether an old jurisdictional form remained justified. But it distinguished a rarely used or anomalous property-sequestration practice from in-state personal service, a rule both firmly established at the Fourteenth Amendment's adoption and still embraced by every State.

Concurrences

Justice White

Reasoning

Justice White joined the historical analysis through Part II-C and agreed that California had jurisdiction. He emphasized the nationwide and enduring acceptance of jurisdiction based on personal service within the forum: absent a showing that the rule is generally arbitrary and irrational, the Court could not invalidate it under due process.

White did not say that tradition automatically immunizes a procedure from constitutional review. He recognized that the Court may invalidate even an established practice, as it did in Shaffer, but found no basis to conclude that transient jurisdiction is facially unconstitutional.

White also rejected case-by-case fairness challenges where the defendant intentionally entered the forum. Entertaining such claims would produce endless fact-specific litigation over a rule that is ordinarily clear and workable; Burnham's intentional presence and personal service were sufficient.

Justice Brennan

Reasoning

Justice Brennan agreed with the judgment and, joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun, and O'Connor, agreed that jurisdiction based on voluntary in-state presence generally satisfies due process. He rejected, however, Justice Scalia's view that a jurisdictional rule is constitutional merely because of its historical pedigree.

For Brennan, International Shoe and Shaffer require an independent inquiry into contemporary fair play and substantial justice for every asserted basis of state-court jurisdiction, including traditional ones. History remains important, but it is relevant because longstanding practice gives a visitor clear notice that entering a State may expose that visitor to suit—not because history alone decides constitutionality forever.

Under that fairness inquiry, voluntarily entering a State ordinarily provides an adequate basis for jurisdiction. A visitor receives the State's legal protections and public services, can use its courts as a plaintiff, can reasonably foresee suit there, and ordinarily faces less hardship from defending there because modern travel, communication, and procedural devices reduce litigation burdens.

On these facts, Burnham knowingly and voluntarily entered California and was served there. The fairness factors therefore supported jurisdiction, though Brennan left open the possibility that involuntary or exceptionally attenuated presence might not suffice in another case.

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens concurred only in the judgment. He declined to join either Justice Scalia's tradition-centered approach or Justice Brennan's fairness-centered framework because he viewed the dispute over their broader theories as unnecessary to resolve this case.

For Stevens, the historical consensus identified by Justice Scalia, the fairness considerations identified by Justice Brennan, and the practical common sense emphasized by Justice White all pointed in the same direction. Together, they made this an easy case: California could exercise jurisdiction over Burnham after personally serving him during his voluntary visit.