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Plaintiff Personal Jurisdiction And Venue Transfer, Scott Dodson Dec 2018

Plaintiff Personal Jurisdiction And Venue Transfer, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

Personal jurisdiction usually focuses on the rights of the defendant. That is because a plaintiff implicitly consents to personal jurisdiction in the court where the plaintiff chooses to file. But what if the defendant seeks to transfer venue to a court in a state in which the plaintiff has no contacts and never consented to personal jurisdiction? Lower courts operate on the assumption that, in both ordinary venue-transfer cases under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) and multidistrict-litigation cases under § 1407(a), personal-jurisdiction concerns for plaintiffs simply do not apply. I contest that assumption. Neither statute expands the statutory authorization of federal-court …


Beyond Bias In Diversity Jurisdiction, Scott Dodson Dec 2018

Beyond Bias In Diversity Jurisdiction, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

The long-running debate over the propriety and proper scope of diversity jurisdiction has always centered on the traditional justification for diversity jurisdiction: the need to avoid actual or perceived state-court bias against out-of-state parties. Supporters of diversity jurisdiction assert that such bias continues to justify diversity jurisdiction, while opponents argue that it does not. In my view, both sides have it wrong. Supporters are wrong that out-of-state bias and its perception are sufficient to justify diversity jurisdiction today. Yet opponents are wrong that the lack of bias supports the abolition or extreme restriction of diversity jurisdiction. The problem is the …


The Irrelevance Of Jurisdictionality In Fort Bend County V. Davis, Scott Dodson Dec 2018

The Irrelevance Of Jurisdictionality In Fort Bend County V. Davis, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

In Fort Bend County v. Davis, the Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether Title VII's exhaustion requirement is jurisdictional. I argue that the Court should not answer that question because it is the wrong question. The real issue confronting the parties in the case is whether the district court was correct to dismiss a claim for failure to exhaust when the defendant failed to raise the exhaustion defect until summary judgment. That issue implicates the effects of the defect, not its character. Those effects can be determined from ordinary principles of statutory interpretation. The parties and the …


The Irrelevance Of Jurisdictionality In Fort Bend County V. Davis, Scott Dodson Dec 2018

The Irrelevance Of Jurisdictionality In Fort Bend County V. Davis, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

No abstract provided.