Hoffman v. Barnes, 2012 WL 1021837 (N.D. Ill.)
Hoffman and his screen printing equipment company M&R
sued Barnes for defamation, violation of the Illinois UDTPA, and false
advertising under the Lanham Act, based on posts on two printing industry
related discussion forums. (Side note: I
dearly love the internet and its ability to sustain two, and most likely more, printing industry related discussion
forums.)
Barnes moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction,
and the court granted the motion.
Hoffman lives in Lake County, Illinois, and M & R is a
Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Glen Ellyn,
Illinois. Barnes, who sells equipment made by M&R’s competitors, lives in
North Carolina.
Due process is the limit on personal jurisdiction under
Illinois law. Because Barnes lacked
continuous and systematic contacts with Illinois allowing the exercise of
general jurisdiction, the court examined specific jurisdiction: whether Barnes
purposefully directed his activities at Illinois and whether the alleged injury
arose out of those activities sufficiently that the exercise of jurisdiction
would comport with due process. For
intentional torts, constitutionally sufficient contacts exist if the defendant’s
actions are expressly aimed at the forum state, with the defendant’s knowledge
that the effects would be felt/the plaintiff injured in the forum state. Express aiming has proved tricky to evaluate.
The complaint easily alleged intentional tortious conduct
and Barnes’s knowledge thatHoffman would feel the brunt of his injury in
Illinois since that is where Hoffman resides and where M & R Printing is
located. Barnes even “posted a photograph of himself standing in front of the M
& R Printing headquarters in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.”
So is that it for express aiming? Well, if so, would it be a separate
prong? Some courts have basically read
it out, requiring only conduct that is “targeted at a plaintiff whom the
defendant knows to be a resident of the forum state,” while others require the
forum state to be the “focal point of the tort.” The 7th Circuit considers the
relationship between the allegedly tortious conduct and the forum state itself
to be a crucial consideration. Tamburo v. Dworkin, 601 F.3d 693 (7th Cir.2010),
found that while precedent had “read Calder to require a forum-state injury and
‘something more’ directed at that state before jurisdiction over a defendant
may be considered proper, … “[t]ortious acts aimed at a target in the forum
state and undertaken for the express purpose of causing injury there are
sufficient to satisfy Calder' s express-aiming requirement.” Still, that something more has to be more
than mere residence of the plaintiff.
Here, the court found that there was no evidence of express
aiming beyond plaintiffs’ mere residence in Illinois. Though Barnes’s comments were clearly aimed
at plaintiffs, the fact that they were located in Illinois was merely
incidental; M&R apparently sells equipment all over the world. In Tamburo,
some of the harassing messages at issue provided the plaintiff’s Illinois
address and urged readers to contact and harass him, but here there was no
similar targeting of Illinois. “Although
the comments also encourage readers to purchase other products, there are no
allegations that any actual customers were swayed by Barnes' comments or that
anyone contacted Hoffman directly in Illinois.”
Diverting sales from M&R seemed secondary to a personal attack on
Hoffman. This wasn’t enough for express
aiming.
The court didn’t believe that Calder allowed any plaintiff to hale any defendant into court in
the plaintiff’s home state, where the defendant had no contacts, merely by
asserting that the defendant had committed a tort.
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