Law Commons^™

If Corporations Are People, Why Can’T They Play Tag?, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Burnham v. Superior Court — despite producing a splintered vote with no opinion garnering a majority of the Court — made one thing clear: an individual defendant can be subject to personal jurisdiction simply by being served with process while he or she happens to be in a forum regardless of whether the defendant has any contacts with that forum. This method of acquiring personal jurisdiction is called transient or “tag” jurisdiction. Tag jurisdiction is older than minimum contacts jurisdiction, and used to be the primary method for determining whether an out of state defendant …