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The Future Of General Jurisdiction: The Effects Of Daimler Ag V. Bauman, Stephanie Denker

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

The Due Process Clause requires a court to have jurisdiction over a lawsuit before binding the parties to its judgment. However, before 2014, the Supreme Court had not addressed whether a court could impute a subsidiary's contacts to its parent corporation for jurisdictional purposes. Because of this oversight, the Courts of Appeals split over how to impute a subsidiary's contacts. Some courts apply the agency test, while other courts apply variations of the alter ego test. As a result, courts inconsistently asserted jurisdiction over multinational corporations, leading plaintiffs to forum shop and corporations to speculate which forums might assert jurisdiction …