Evasive Jurisdiction: Site Unseen

ABSTRACT: The District Court of Kansas reminded practitioners that the plaintiff's prima facie burden to establish personal jurisdiction cannot be met by inadequate allegations and a Motion for Jurisdictional Discovery.

A plaintiff filed suit after suffering personal injury from allegedly defective eye drops that she purchased from a Target store in Kansas City, Kansas. Specifically, she claimed that defendants committed alleged omissions pertaining to the manufacturing, marketing, advertising, labeling, distribution and sale of the product, and noted the FDA recalled the eyedrops in October 2023.

The Amended Complaint combined each of the defendants, alleging the presence of personal jurisdiction because “each of them conducted and [did] business in the State of Kansas,” and [had] contact with the State of Kansas through “marketing, promoting, distributing and selling” the product to individuals within the State of Kansas. The defendants responded with a Motion to Dismiss arguing that the Complaint’s boilerplate language did not establish how each of their respective companies directed their business to Kansas and that the plaintiff had no proof of activities to meet the standard of purposeful availment to show a causal relationship to the alleged injury. Instead of filing an Amended Complaint with specific allegations, the plaintiff responded with a Motion for Jurisdictional Discovery.

Legal Standard

It is the plaintiff’s burden to establish personal jurisdiction. As courts of limited jurisdiction, federal courts hold a presumption against jurisdiction unless the plaintiff can show federal question and complete diversity. To establish personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff’s allegations in the Complaint are taken as true to the extent such allegations are not controverted by the defendants’ affidavits and to the extent that these are well-pled facts rather than mere conclusory allegations. In doing so, the plaintiff must demonstrate a prima facie showing to support jurisdiction through affidavit or written materials. If there are conflicting affidavits, the factual controversies are resolved in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.

After filing a Motion to Dismiss based on a lack of jurisdiction, it is within the district court's discretion to permit discovery requests to resolve jurisdictional issues. However, a court should deny such a request when it is “designed to help a plaintiff meet his or her threshold burden of establishing that the Court has personal jurisdiction over a case.” 

The District of Kansas’ Analysis

The District of Kansas denied the plaintiff’s Motion for Jurisdictional Discovery because the plaintiff did not establish a prima facie case of personal jurisdiction. It reasoned that the plaintiff’s motion failed to substantively address personal jurisdiction, failed to controvert the defendants’ affidavits for lack of contacts in the State of Kansas, and failed to provide via affidavit or other written material, any supportive fact that could be taken as true to support jurisdiction over the defendants. As put best by the Court, the plaintiff’s “request appear[ed] to be nothing more than an ’attempt to utilize jurisdictional discovery as a means to rectify [her] own deficient jurisdictional allegations.’”

Key Takeaway

The Court will not allow discovery as a means to remedy the plaintiff’s deficient jurisdictional conclusions. The plaintiff bears the burden to establish personal jurisdiction and is required to show a prima facie case via affidavit or other written materials to show jurisdiction over the defendant.