Supreme Court tightens rules on where companies can be sued

OANN ^ | May 30, 2017 | Andrew Chung

[Mechanicos]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday tightened rules on where injury lawsuits may be filed, handing a victory to corporations by undercutting the ability of plaintiffs to bring claims in friendly courts in a case involving Texas-based BNSF Railway Co.

The justices, in a 8-1 decision, threw out a lower court decision in Montana allowing out-of-state residents to sue there over injuries that occurred anywhere in BNSF’s nationwide network. State courts cannot hear claims against companies when they are not based in the state or the alleged injuries did not occur there, the justices ruled.

[Mechanicos]

Ambulance-chasing, forum-shopping lawyers are upset over this ruling.

[silverleaf]

8-1
Whoot!
They are finally acting like judges

[PAR35]

And a real boon for Delaware lawyers.

[rstrahan]

First throwing out the rule allowing patent lawsuits to be files anywhere (read that the East Texas Court) and now this. Common sense returning to filing suits.

[Go Gordon]

Leave it to Sonia Sotomayor to be on the wrong side of another easy case to decide. She’s such a horrible excuse for a Justice.

[PAR35]

This one was just basic Con Law (and we’ve established that one of justices obviously got through that class on Affirmative Action rather than knowledge).

On the other hand, I’m not a fan of the patent law decision. Better in the EDTx and the 5th than NDCal and WD Wa. and the 9th Circus.

EDTx does have a higher rate of success for patent holders than do the districts that cater to the big corporations that figure they can do whatever they want.

Interestingly enough, one of the first blows against filing suits in the EDTx involved Toyota sucessfully moving a case out of the ED Tx a few years ago. http://business.cch.com/ipld/InreToyotaMotorCorporation.pdf And now Toyota has moved their North American HQ into the Eastern District of Texas.