Law Commons^™

Hazardous Jurisdiction/Chatham Steel Corporation V. Brown: A Note On Personal Jurisdiction And Cercla, Martin A. Mccrory

Cleveland State Law Review

In 1986, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) was amended to include, among other things, a provision for nationwide service of process. This provision greatly increased the choice of federal forums in which to sue defendants in CERCLA cases. In Chatham v. Brown, the court broke from this line of thinking and analyzed the case using a traditional constitutional Due Process analysis. Although the Chatham court ultimately held that it had personal jurisdiction over the defendants, the analysis it used may be a harbinger of things to come. That is to say, the constitutional analysis in Chatham …