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By the way, the foreign citizen usually wants to sue in American court if he can, particularly in tort cases. American tort laws, particularly concerning damages, are unusually generous to the plaintiff. Also, American discovery rules are possibly the most liberal in the world - it's a lot harder to compel the other party to produce evidence in almost any other country.

This was what was going on in the Piper Aircraft case. The plaintiff's definitely wanted the case tried under Pennsylvania or California law, not Scottish law. In Scotland, there was no such thing as a wrongful death claim as we know it in the States. The survivor could only recover for their own "loss of society/loss of consortium" - they could not, as they could under American law, recover for the decedent's medical expenses or pain and suffering or the loss of the decedent's future income.

The point is that you actually see quite a few foreign plaintiffs suing US defendants in US court for things that happened overseas. It happens a lot in products liability cases. You also see it in things like the suits against Union Carbide over the Bhopal disaster, or suits by Indonesian aborigines against Freeport McMoran.