Civil procedure: personal jurisdiction cases
Library edition words from U.S. Reports
Burger King, Daimler and Ford: what the Supreme Court held, in the reporter’s own words.
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- Words from
- United States Reports, Library of Congress and supremecourt.gov. Opinions and syllabi of the Supreme Court are U.S. government works, free to use.
- Edition
- United States Reports, vols. 471 and 571, as scanned by the Library of Congress, one PDF a case; and the Court’s preliminary print of vol. 592, part 2 (Mar. 25, 2021)
- Checked
- Word for word against the source, on 17 October 2026.
- How it was made
- Each card is a case card, named by the case’s name with its citation and year.Its holding is one sentence of the case’s syllabus, as the PDF’s text gives it: running heads and page-foot notes are dropped, a word broken at a line end is joined, and the part’s number or letter and its page reference are left off.Its facts are the syllabus’s own statement of them, copied the same way, for the one case whose syllabus has one the text reads cleanly.Parts the PDF’s text misreads are left out, never corrected, and each brief’s issue and rule are left for you to write.Ford is the opinion as the Court’s preliminary print sets it, with its final pagination, since volume 592 is not yet bound.
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- Aheadso chose the cards and set them out.Every word on them is the source’s.
- On the shelf
- Law, Civil procedure · 3 cards
A syllabus is no part of the Court’s opinion.The Reporter of Decisions prepares it for the reader’s convenience (United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337).
The cards
- Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz471 U.S. 462 (1985)Civil procedureA forum may assert specific jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant where an alleged injury arises out of or relates to actions by the defendant himself that are purposefully directed toward forum residents, and where jurisdiction would not otherwise offend "fair play and substantial justice."
Facts
Appellant is a Florida corporation whose principal offices are in Miami. It conducts most of its restaurant business through a franchise operation, under which franchisees are licensed to use appellant's trademarks and service marks in leased standardized restaurant facilities for a period of 20 years. The governing contracts provide that the franchise relationship is established in Miami and governed by Florida law, and call for payment of all required monthly fees and forwarding of all relevant notices to the Miami headquarters. The Miami headquarters sets policy and works directly with the franchisees in attempting to resolve major problems. Day-to-day monitoring of franchisees, however, is conducted through district offices that in turn report to the Miami headquarters. Appellee is a Michigan resident who, along with another Michigan resident, entered into a 20-year franchise contract with appellant to operate a restaurant in Michigan. Subsequently, when the restaurant's patronage declined, the franchisees fell behind in their monthly payments. After extended negotiations among the franchisees, the Michigan district office, and the Miami headquarters proved unsuccessful in solving the problem, headquarters terminated the franchise and ordered the franchisees to vacate the premises. They refused and continued to operate the restaurant. Appellant then brought a diversity action in Federal District Court in Florida, alleging that the franchisees had breached their franchise obligations and requesting damages and injunctive relief. The franchisees claimed that, because they were Michigan residents and because appellant's claim did not "arise" within Florida, the District Court lacked personal jurisdiction over them. But the court held that the franchisees were subject to personal jurisdiction pursuant to Florida's long-arm statute, which extends jurisdiction to any person, whether or not a citizen or resident of the State, who breaches a contract in the State by failing to perform acts that the contract requires to be performed there. Thereafter, the court entered judgment against the franchisees on the merits. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that "[j]urisdiction under these circumstances would offend the fundamental fairness which is the touchstone of due process." - Daimler AG v. Bauman571 U.S. 117 (2014)Civil procedureDaimler is not amenable to suit in California for injuries allegedly caused by conduct of MB Argentina that took place entirely outside the United States.
- Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court592 U.S. 351 (2021)Civil procedureBristol-Myers and Walden v. Fiore, 571 U. S. 277, reinforce all that the Court has said about why Montana's and Minnesota's courts may decide these cases.
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Every card here is copied word for word from its source.None of it is written by AI.