Rodriguez et al v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Filing
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Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton: ORDER entered. MEMORANDUM AND ORDER:" In accordance with the foregoing, defendant Axcelis-Koreas motion to dismiss Counts III and IV of the amended complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction (Docket No. 38 ) is ALLOWED. So ordered." (Moore, Kellyann)
United States District Court
District of Massachusetts
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v.
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SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. and )
AXCELIS TECHNOLOGIES, LTD.,
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Defendants.
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RAMON RODRIGUEZ and LINDA
RODRIGUEZ,
Plaintiffs,
Civil No.
09-11028-NMG
MEMORANDUM & ORDER
GORTON, J.
Plaintiffs Ramon and Linda Rodriguez bring suit against
Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd. (“Samsung”) and Axcelis
Technologies, Ltd. (“Axcelis-Korea”) for negligence and loss of
consortium.
Pending before the Court is Axcelis-Korea’s motion
to dismiss the case for lack of personal jurisdiction.
I.
Background
In March, 2006, Ramon Rodriguez (“Rodriguez”), an employee
of Axcelis Technologies, Inc. (“Axcelis-US”), a Delaware
corporation with a principal place of business in Massachusetts,
traveled to Korea with fellow Axcelis-US employees to install an
ion implanter on Samsung premises.
Rodriguez alleges that he
sustained permanent back injuries when, during that installation,
he was hit by a falling truss.
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On March 11, 2009, plaintiffs filed their complaint against
Samsung in the Massachusetts Superior Court for Essex County.
Samsung timely removed the case to this Court and, soon
thereafter, moved to dismiss the case on forum non conveniens
grounds.
The motion to dismiss was denied and the case proceeded
to discovery.
In its response to plaintiffs’ first set of interrogatories,
Samsung indicated that the installation team was not under its
control, but rather was supervised and directed by two senior
managers of Axcelis-Korea, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AxcelisUS.
Axcelis-Korea is a Korean corporation with a principal place
of business in Korea that provides sales and support services in
Korea and China on a contract basis.
It is a distinct legal
entity from Axcelis-US, with separate corporate records,
accounts, employees and facilities.
On February 10, 2011,
plaintiffs amended their complaint to add claims against AxcelisKorea.
Axcelis-Korea disputes the supervision allegation,
explaining that the Axcelis-Korea employees involved were
responsible for managing the overall schedule of the tool
installation and for obtaining Samsung’s formal acceptance, not
for supervising the installation team.
Axcelis-Korea contends
that, to the contrary, Axcelis-US employees were solely
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responsible for supervising the installation.1
On May 27, 2011, Axcelis-Korea filed the pending motion to
dismiss counts III and IV of the amended complaint for lack of
personal jurisdiction.
II.
Legal Analysis
A.
Standard
On a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction,
the plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating that personal
jurisdiction is authorized by the Massachusetts long-arm statute,
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 223A, § 3 (“the Massachusetts long-arm
statute”), and consistent with the Due Process Clause of the
United States Constitution. Astro-Med, Inc. v. Nihon Kohden Am.,
Inc., 591 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2009).
Because the Massachusetts
long-arm statute reaches to the full extent that the Constitution
allows, the Court may proceed directly to the constitutional
analysis. See Tatro v. Manor Care, Inc., 625 N.E.2d 549, 553 (Mass.
1994); Sawtelle v. Farrell, 70 F.3d 1381, 1388 (1st Cir. 1995).
Due process requires that the defendants have “minimum
contacts” with the forum state such that the “maintenance of the
suit does not offend traditional notions of fair play and
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For the purposes of its personal jurisdiction analysis, the
Court accepts as true plaintiffs’ properly supported claim that
Axcelis-Korea was the supervising entity. See Adelson v. Hananel
(“Adelson I”), 510 F.3d 43, 48 (1st Cir. 2007) (explaining that a
court conducting a prima facie review of the jurisdictional facts
must accept as true properly supported proffers of evidence by
the plaintiff).
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substantial justice.” Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310,
316 (1945).
A court may exercise either general or specific
personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant. Angela
Adams Licensing, LCC v. Dynamic Rugs, Inc., 463 F. Supp. 2d 82,
84 (D. Me. 2006).
General jurisdiction exists when the defendant
has engaged in “continuous and systematic activity,” unrelated to
the suit, in the forum state. Pritzker v. Yari, 42 F.3d 53, 60
(1st Cir. 1994).
Specific jurisdiction exists where the
plaintiff’s cause of action arises from or relates closely to the
defendant’s contacts with the forum state. Id.
Plaintiffs
acknowledge that the Court does not have general personal
jurisdiction over Axcelis-Korea so the Court will confine its
analysis to the issue of specific personal jurisdiction.
The First Circuit employs a tripartite analysis to
determine whether the exercise of specific jurisdiction is
appropriate: 1) whether the claims arise out of or are related to
the defendant’s in-state activities, 2) whether the defendant has
purposefully availed itself of the laws of the forum state and 3)
whether the exercise of jurisdiction is reasonable under the
circumstances. Platten v. HG Bermuda Exempted, Ltd., 437 F.3d
118, 135 (1st Cir. 2006).
A court must make “an affirmative
finding on each of the three elements of the test . . . to
support a finding of specific jurisdiction.” Negron-Torres v.
Verizon Commc’ns, Inc., 478 F.3d 19, 24-25 (1st Cir. 2007).
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Accordingly, if the Court finds one of the elements lacking, it
need not examine the others.
B.
Application
1.
Relatedness
The “relatedness” prong focuses on the causal nexus between
the plaintiff’s claim and the defendants’ contacts with the forum
state. Astro-Med, Inc. v. Nihon Kohden Am., Inc., 591 F.3d 1, 9
(1st Cir. 2009).
In a tort case, it is not enough for a
defendant’s in-state activities to have been the but-for cause of
a plaintiff’s injury; rather, the First Circuit has adopted a
stricter proximate cause standard which focuses upon whether the
defendant’s in-state conduct “form[ed] an important, or at least
material, element of proof in the plaintiff’s case,” Harlow v.
Children’s Hosp., 432 F.3d 50, 61 (1st Cir. 2005), such that “the
litigation itself is founded directly on those activities,”
Adelson v. Hananel (“Adelson II”), 652 F.3d 75, 81 (1st Cir.
2011) (emphasis added).
The First Circuit’s more rigorous
standard ensures that defendants have fair warning that their
conduct will subject them to a foreign state’s jurisdiction.
Axcelis-Korea’s in-state contract with Axcelis-US was surely
a but-for cause of Rodriguez’s injury.
Had Axcelis-Korea not
entered into a contract in Massachusetts with Axcelis-US to
perform services in Korea, its managers would not have been
present at Samsung’s facility to supervise the installation and
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Rodriguez would not have been injured as a result of their
allegedly negligent acts or omissions.
The contract was not, however, the proximate cause of
plaintiffs’ injuries because their negligence claim sounds in
tort, not contract, and it arose directly out of allegedly
tortious conduct which occurred entirely in Korea.
Axcelis-
Korea’s limited contacts with Massachusetts are not, as due
process requires, an important or material element of proof in
plaintiffs’ case.
To sustain their negligence action, plaintiffs
must show that Axcelis-Korea’s failure to supervise properly the
installation caused a truss to fall and injure Rodriguez.
supervision, or lack thereof, took place in Korea.
fell and Rodriguez was injured in Korea.
The
The truss
While the contract
between Axcelis-Korea and Axcelis-US may have precipitated
Rodriguez’s trip to Korea, it was not the proximate cause of his
back injury. See Christopher v. Mt. Snow, Ltd., No. 95-10352-MLW,
1996 WL 590738, at *6 (D. Mass. Sept. 24, 1996) (explaining that
while Mt. Snow’s advertisements “precipitated” Christopher’s
visit to Vermont, they were not the proximate cause of her
injuries on the ski slopes).
Furthermore, the allegation that Linda Rodriguez suffered a
loss of consortium in Massachusetts as a result of AxcelisKorea’s actions in Korea does not bear upon the relatedness prong
and is insufficient, by itself, to support specific jurisdiction.
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Mass. Sch. of Law v. Am. Bar Ass’n, 142 F.3d 26, 36 (1st Cir.
1998) (“We have wrestled before with this issue of whether the
in-forum effects of extra-forum activities suffice to constitute
minimum contacts and have found in the negative.”).
2.
Purposeful availment and reasonableness factors
While plaintiffs’ failure to demonstrate relatedness
obviates the Court’s need to weigh purposeful availment or
reasonableness, plaintiffs’ inability to satisfy either of those
prongs reinforces the conclusion that jurisdiction over AxcelisKorea is absent.
The purposeful availment inquiry requires the Court to
reflect upon the concepts of voluntariness and foreseeability:
Voluntariness requires that the defendant’s contacts
with the forum state proximately result from actions by
the defendant himself. . . . Foreseeability requires
that the contacts also must be of a nature that the
defendant could reasonably anticipate being haled into
court there.
Phillips v. Prairie Eye Ctr., 530 F.3d 22, 28 (1st Cir. 2008)
(citations and quotation marks omitted).
The threshold showing
for purposeful availment is lower in the tort context for the
simple reason that a tortfeasor does not often purposely avail
himself of the protections of the laws of a forum state. Kim v.
Veglas, 607 F. Supp. 2d 286, 295 (D. Mass. 2009).
Even so, a
tort plaintiff must make some showing as to voluntariness and
foreseeability to ensure “that personal jurisdiction is not
premised solely upon a defendant’s random, isolated, or fortuitous
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contacts with the forum state.” Sawtelle, 70 F.3d at 1391 (quoting
Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 774 (1984)).
Rodriguez has made no such showing.
Axcelis-Korea did not
reach out to the Massachusetts market through its website or
advertising.
It has no offices or employees in Massachusetts and
is not registered to do business there.
It has never initiated a
suit in Massachusetts nor consented to be sued there.
services are performed in Korea and China.
All of its
It defies reason to
surmise that, Axcelis-Korea, a Korean corporation with a
principal place of business in Korea, reasonably foresaw that its
supervision of operations at a plant in Korea would subject it to
a tort suit in Massachusetts.
The reasonableness factors do not suggest a different
result.
If it is unreasonable to require a Vermont defendant to
travel to Massachusetts when the plaintiff’s injury took place in
Vermont, Christopher, 1996 WL 590738, at *8, it is certainly
unreasonable to force a Korean company to travel over 6,000 miles
to defend against a claim the basis of which originated in Korea.
It would be particularly burdensome and inefficient in this case,
where nearly all of the witnesses and evidence is in Korea.
Finally, while Massachusetts has an interest in asserting
jurisdiction over a foreign tortfeasor who causes injury within
its borders, that interest is diminished where, as here, the
injury occurs outside of Massachusetts. Sawtelle, 70 F.3d at 1395.
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For all of those reasons, the Court finds that it lacks
personal jurisdiction over Axcelis-Korea.
Jurisdictional
discovery is unwarranted because plaintiffs have not made a
colorable claim for personal jurisdiction and have not identified
additional pertinent avenues of inquiry that might allow them to
do so. See Stars for Art Prod. FZ, LLC v. Dandana, LLC, No. 1010629-JLT, 2011 WL 3678931, at *8 (D. Mass. Aug. 22, 2011).
It is worth noting that the dismissal of this defendant for
lack of personal jurisdiction will not work an injustice.
Under
Massachusetts law, Rodriguez is eligible to collect worker’s
compensation for lost wages and medical expenses from his
employer, Axcelis-US.
He may continue to prosecute his suit
against Samsung, over whom the Court has general jurisdiction by
virtue of its continuous and systematic contacts with
Massachusetts.
If necessary, he can even sue Axcelis-Korea.
He
just cannot do so in Massachusetts.
ORDER
In accordance with the foregoing, defendant Axcelis-Korea’s
motion to dismiss Counts III and IV of the amended complaint for
lack of personal jurisdiction (Docket No. 38) is ALLOWED.
So ordered.
/s/ Nathaniel M. Gorton
Nathaniel M. Gorton
United States District Judge
Dated November 7, 2011
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