Stewart v. Marathon Petroleum Company, LP et al

Filing 64

ORDER AND REASONS re 52 Motion for Protective Order. IT IS ORDERED that the motion is GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART, as set forth in document. Marathon is HEREBY ORDERED to respond to plaintiff's discovery requests as ordered and limited above, fully and in writing, in accordance with Fed. R. Civ. P. 33 and 34, and to make all responsive documents available to plaintiff's counsel, no later than February 7, 2018. Signed by Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Wilkinson, Jr on 1/24/2018. (mmv)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
EDDIE STEWART, III

CIVIL ACTION

VERSUS

NO. 17-7775

MARATHON PETROLEUM CO., LP
ET AL.

SECTION “N” (2)

ORDER AND REASONS ON MOTION
This is a personal injury case brought in this court pursuant to diversity of
citizenship jurisdiction. Plaintiff, Eddie Stewart, III, alleges that he was injured on
August 11, 2016, when the commercial tanker trailer that he had driven from Louisiana
to Michigan was cleaned improperly after offloading of its chemical cargo and
negligently reloaded with the incorrect chemical by employees at the refinery of
defendant, Marathon Petroleum Co. (“Marathon”), which caused the trailer to explode
several hours later in Ohio while plaintiff was in transit back to Louisiana.
Marathon filed a Motion for Protective Order. Record Doc. No. 52. The motion
seeks an order protecting Marathon from responding to plaintiff’s written discovery,
which the presiding district judge previously permitted on a limited basis, Record Doc.
No. 46, solely for purposes of addressing Marathon’s pending motion to dismiss for lack
of personal jurisdiction. Record Doc. No. 14. Stewart filed a timely opposition
memorandum.

Record Doc. No. 57.

Marathon received leave to file a reply

memorandum. Record Doc. Nos. 60, 61, 62. The court heard oral argument on the

motion on January 24, 2018. IT IS ORDERED that the motion is GRANTED IN PART
AND DENIED IN PART, as follows.
“Unless otherwise limited by court order, the scope of discovery is . . . any
nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to
the needs of the case . . . .” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) (emphasis added). In this case, Chief
Judge Engelhardt has issued an order restricting discovery at this time to “appropriatelytailored interrogatories and document requests . . . [specifically citing only Fed. R. Civ.
P. 33 and 34] . . . limited to the issue of personal jurisdiction.” Record Doc. No. 46
(emphasis added). Depositions, requests for admissions, third-party subpoenas or other
forms of discovery extending to other claims or defenses beyond personal jurisdiction
are not permitted.
Thus, the motion is granted as to plaintiff’s requests for admissions submitted to
Marathon. Use of this form of discovery allowed by Rule 36 was not permitted by Chief
Judge Engelhardt’s order limiting discovery. No responses to these requests for
admissions need be provided.
As to the subject interrogatories and requests for production, determination of this
motion requires evaluation of the standards applicable to both the personal jurisdiction
defense and the scope of and limitations on discovery imposed by Fed. R. Civ. P.
26(b)(1) and (2). In this case, plaintiff asserts that personal jurisdiction over Marathon
is proper in this district “through both general and specific jurisdiction.” Plaintiff’s
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opposition memorandum, Record Doc. No. 57 at p. 3 (emphasis added). In its reply
memorandum, Marathon argues that Chief Judge Engelhardt’s order permitted Stewart
to conduct discovery as to general jurisdiction only. Record Doc. No. 62 at pp. 2, 8. I
disagree. As quoted above, Chief Judge Engelhardt’s order was clear that discovery was
being permitted “limited to the issue of personal jurisdiction.” Although his order
discussed the “at home” component of the personal jurisdiction standard, the order’s
conclusion permitted discovery as to the personal jurisdiction defense as a whole, not just
as to general jurisdiction. If Chief Judge Engelhardt had intended to restrict discovery
to general jurisdiction only, he could easily have done so by inserting the single word
“general” into the key sentence of his order. He did not.
Judge Barbier of this court recently outlined the United States Supreme Court and
Fifth Circuit standards for personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant in a
diversity case, as follows.
First, the forum state’s long-arm statute must confer personal jurisdiction.
Second, the exercise of jurisdiction must not exceed the boundaries of the
Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The limits of the
Louisiana long-arm statute are coextensive with constitutional due process
limits. Therefore, the inquiry is whether jurisdiction comports with federal
constitutional guarantees.
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees
that no federal court may assume jurisdiction in personam of a non-resident
defendant unless the defendant has certain minimum contacts with the
forum state such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend traditional
notions of fair play and substantial justice. Sufficient minimum contacts
will give rise to either specific, case-linked jurisdiction or general, allpurpose jurisdiction.
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Specific jurisdiction is confined to adjudication of issues deriving
from, or connected with, the very controversy that establishes jurisdiction.
In order to establish specific jurisdiction, a plaintiff must show that (1)
there are sufficient (i.e., not random fortuitous or attenuated) pre-litigation
connections between the non-resident defendant and the forum; (2) the
connection has been purposefully established by the defendant; and (3) the
plaintiff’s cause of action arises out of or is related to the defendant’s forum
contacts. The defendant can then defeat the exercise of specific jurisdiction
by showing that it would be unreasonable.
General jurisdiction, on the other hand, does not require a showing
of contacts out of which the cause of action arose. A court may assert
general jurisdiction over foreign defendants to hear any and all claims
against them. The proper consideration when determining general
jurisdiction is whether the defendant’s “affiliations with the State are so
‘continuous and systematic’ as to render [it] essentially at home in the
forum State.”
Only a limited set of affiliations with a forum will render a defendant
amenable to general jurisdiction there. “For an individual, the paradigm
forum for the exercise of general jurisdiction is the individual’s domicile;
for a corporation, it is an equivalent place, one in which the corporation is
fairly regarded as at home.” With respect to a corporation, the paradigm
bases for the exercise of general jurisdiction are “the place of incorporation
and principal place of business.” General jurisdiction does not exist simply
because of “the magnitude of the defendant’s in-state contacts.” Rather, a
court must appraise the defendant’s activities “in their entirety, nationwide
and worldwide.”
Long v. Patton Hosp. Mgmt., LLC, No. 15-2213, 2016 WL 760780, at *3-4 (E.D. La.
Feb. 26, 2016) (quoting Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746, 760, 761, 762 n.20
(2014)) (additional quotations and citations omitted).
As to specific jurisdiction, as several courts have recently illustrated, examples of
facts that may establish a defendant’s pre-litigation contacts with the forum from which
plaintiff’s cause of action must arise or be connected, include defendant’s business
locations and number of employees in the forum state; ownership or management of real
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property in the state; transacting and soliciting business with companies and customers
in the forum; execution, delivery and performance in the state of contracts related to the
claims in the lawsuit; total revenues from defendant’s in-state activities; registering for
business and maintaining a registered agent for service in the forum; paying state income,
property and unemployment taxes; and regularly attending trade shows in the forum
state. See Mercury Rents, Inc. v. Crenshaw Enters., LLC, No. 6:16-CV-1741, 2017 WL
2380642, at *5 (W.D. La. Apr. 13, 2017), report & recommendation adopted, 2017 WL
2382483 (W.D. La. May 30, 2017); Long, 2016 WL 760780, at *4-6; Norman v. H&E
Equip. Servs., Inc., No. 3:14-CV-367, 2015 WL 1281989, at *3 (M.D. La. Mar. 20,
2015).
As to general jurisdiction, one federal district court in Louisiana has noted that the
Supreme Court in “Daimler [c]hanged the [j]urisdictional [l]andscape” dramatically.
Gulf Coast Bank v. Designed Conveyor Sys., LLC, No. 16-412-JJB-RLB, 2017 WL
120645, at *2 (M.D. La. Jan. 12, 2017). Justice Sotomayor in her concurrence in the
Daimler judgment sounded a well-founded alarm that the
Court’s focus on [defendant] Daimler’s operations outside of [the forum
state] ignores the lodestar of our personal jurisdiction jurisprudence: A
State may subject a defendant to the burden of suit if the defendant has
sufficiently taken advantage of the State’s laws and protections through its
contacts in the State; whether the defendant has contacts elsewhere is
immaterial[,]
Daimler, 134 S. Ct. at 773 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in the judgment), and that the
Daimler Court “adopt[ed] a new rule of constitutional law that is unmoored from decades
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of precedent.” Id. at 764. Nonetheless, Daimler’s holdings are binding on this court and
must be applied to the instant dispute.
Marathon relies heavily on Daimler for its argument that the subject discovery
“has not been appropriately-tailored and, as such, has not been permitted by Judge
Engelhardt.” Defendant’s motion, Record Doc. No. 52 at p. 1. Since Daimler was
decided, “the Fifth Circuit has observed that ‘[i]t is incredibly difficult to establish
general jurisdiction in a forum other than the place of incorporation or principal place of
business.’” Mercury Rents, 2017 WL 2380642, at *5 (quoting Monkton Ins. Servs., Ltd.
v. Ritter, 768 F.3d 429, 432 (5th Cir. 2014)).
However, the difficulty of establishing general jurisdiction post-Daimler does not
foreclose all of the discovery that plaintiff seeks from Marathon. Unlike the captioned
lawsuit between United States citizens involving events that occurred in interstate
commerce between Louisiana and Michigan and in which Stewart has asserted both
general and specific jurisdiction, Daimler was a suit by Argentinian residents against a
German corporation arising from events that occurred solely in Argentina in which
general – not specific – jurisdiction was the sole basis of evaluation. In reaching its
conclusions, the Daimler Court focused particular “attention” on “the transnational
context of this dispute” and the need to “heed . . . the risks to international comity.” Id.
at 762-63. No such transnational context or risks to international comity are involved in
the instant case.
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While Marathon is certainly correct in pointing out the Daimler Court’s
clarification in a footnote that the general jurisdiction evaluation “calls for an appraisal
of a corporation’s activities in their entirety, nationwide and worldwide,” the same
footnote makes clear in the preceding sentence that examination of defendant’s contacts
with the forum state remain relevant, although not the sole focus of the inquiry. Id. at
762 n.20. Indeed, the Court specifically refused to “foreclose the possibility that in an
exceptional case, . . . a corporation’s operations in a forum other than its formal place of
incorporation or principal place of business may be so substantial and of such a nature
as to render the corporation at home in that State.” Id. at 761 n.19.
Further, the Court noted that it had previously held that defendant’s place of
incorporation and principal place of business are the “paradigm” bases for the exercise
of general jurisdiction, but that its precedent “did not hold that a corporation may be
subject to general jurisdiction only in a forum where it is incorporated or has its principal
place of business.” Id. at 760 (citing Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown,
131 S. Ct. 2846, 2853-54 (2011)) (bold emphasis added; underlined emphasis in
original). The dictionary definition of “paradigm” is “example, pattern; especially: an
outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype.” Merriam-Webster.com (MerriamWebster) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paradigm (last visited Jan. 23,
2018). Synonyms for “paradigm” include “ideal, paragon, touchstone.” Dictionary.com
Unabridged (Random House, Inc.), http://www.dictionary.com/browse/paradigm (last
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visited Jan. 23, 2018). Thus, a paradigm is just one ideal example among a set of
possible examples. The paradigmatic bases of place of incorporation and principal place
of business cited in Goodyear and Daimler are not necessarily the exclusive bases for the
exercise of general jurisdiction, and are certainly not the exclusive bases for specific
jurisdiction.
Even if the Daimler reasoning extends to a case like the instant one, which differs
so markedly in its facts concerning the citizenship of the parties and the place where the
allegedly actionable events occurred, relevant and proportional discovery must be
permitted that is sufficient to address whether this may be the “exceptional case” Daimler
itself postulates in which Marathon’s operations in Louisiana are so substantial and of
such a nature and frequency as to render the corporation “at home” in this state.
Applying the foregoing standards, together with the scope and limitation standards
of Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) and (2) applicable to all discovery, the specific discovery
requests are addressed as follows.
The motion is granted as to Interrogatories Nos. 4 and 5, which are duplicative of
the permissible discovery requests in Interrogatory No. 3 and Request for Production
No. 3. “[T]he court must limit the frequency or extent of discovery . . . if it determines
that: (i) the discovery sought is unreasonably cumulative or duplicative . . . .” Fed. R.
Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C)(i). Marathon need not respond to Interrogatories Nos. 4 and 5.

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The motion is also granted as to Interrogatories Nos. 7, 10, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
and 22, which seek information that is neither relevant nor proportional to the limited
scope of discovery permitted by Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) and (2) and Chief Judge
Engelhardt’s order. Marathon need not respond to these interrogatories.
With respect to the remaining interrogatories and requests for production of
documents, the motion is granted in part to the extent that any request seeks materials
beyond an appropriate time period. That time period is hereby defined as and limited to
the period of three (3) years before the accident date of August 11, 2016, through the
present, which applies to all of the following requests that seek a longer time period.
Subject to the foregoing time period limitation, the motion is denied as to
Interrogatory Nos. 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21 and 23. Interrogatories Nos. 21 and 23
are appropriately addressed to Stewart’s allegation that Marathon is subject to specific
jurisdiction. All of these interrogatories seek information within the scope and
proportionality requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) and (2) and Chief Judge
Engelhardt’s order. Marathon must provide written responses to these interrogatories,
sworn under oath as required by Fed. R. Civ. P. 33(b)(1)(B), (3) and (5).
The motion is denied as to Interrogatory No. 6 and Request for Production No. 4
regarding Marathon’s relationship(s) with defendants Quality Distribution, Inc. and
Quality Carriers, Inc. Plaintiff alleges in his amended complaint that these companies
are foreign corporations licensed to and doing business by operating a trucking terminal
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in Louisiana. Record Doc. No. 23 at p. 2. Marathon’s relationship with these companies
may give rise to and is a factor to be considered in the specific jurisdiction analysis.
Norman, 2015 WL 1281989, at *3. While the relationship alone may not be enough to
establish jurisdiction, the requests are within the permissible scope of discovery.
Marathon must provide written responses and produce all responsive materials within its
possession, custody or control.
The motion is denied as to Requests for Production Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 6, which are
within the scope and proportionality limits of discovery Rule 26 and Chief Judge
Engelhardt’s order. Marathon must provide written responses and produce all responsive
materials within its possession, custody or control.
The motion is granted in part and denied in part as to Request for Production
No. 5. The motion is denied in that Marathon must produce any lease, security, coownership or other interest in real property or assets that it held in Louisiana, limited to
materials in effect at the time of the accident at issue through the present. The motion
is granted and Marathon need not respond with respect to past and present parents,
subsidiaries, affiliates, divisions, business units, predecessors in interest or agents.
Marathon must provide written responses and produce all responsive materials within its
possession, custody or control.
Accordingly, Marathon is HEREBY ORDERED to respond to plaintiff’s
discovery requests as ordered and limited above, fully and in writing, in accordance with
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Fed. R. Civ. P. 33 and 34, and to make all responsive documents available to plaintiff’s
counsel, no later than February 7, 2018.

24th
New Orleans, Louisiana, this _________ day of January, 2018.

JOSEPH C. WILKINSON, JR.
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

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