May 3, 2018
On April 20, 2018, Judge Harry Calmar, who presides over the asbestos docket in New London Superior Court, granted Defendant, Pefection HY-Test Company’s (“Perfection”), motion to dismiss all claims against it for lack of personal jurisdiction pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States, in the Reavis v. Ingersoll-Rand Co., et al. matter. Plaintiff, William Reavis, is a resident of Florida and filed his absestos related lawsuit suit in Connecticut against 25 defendants. Reavis claims injury as a result of exposure to asbestos in Indiana, Idaho and while in the Navy. Judge Calmar found that the facts of the case do not support the exercise of either “specific” or “general” jurisdiction over Perfection as Plaintiff’s suit did not arise out of any Perfection contacts within the State of Connecticut, and Perfection, which is not incorporated in Connecticut and does not have a principal place of business here is not “at home” in the forum state.
More specifically, Judge Calmar noted that Perfection has never been organized under the laws of Connecticut, has never been registered to do business in Connecticut, has no employees in Connecticut, does not utilize a Connecticut based sales representative or sales organization, and has never owned, leased or otherwise possessed any real property situated in Connecticut. Perfection has never maintained a bank account that originated in Connecticut and has never had any owenership interest in any business based in Connecticut. Lastly, Perfection’s sales to customers based in Connecticut over the past five years never exceeded nine-tenths (0.9%) of its total annual domestic sales. Accordingly, Judge Calmar ruled that the Court could not exercise either specific or general jurisdiction over Perfection in this case under Constitutional principles established by the United States Supreme Court in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., supra 137 S.Ct. at 1781-82 and Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. __, 134 S.Ct. 746 (2014).
In stark contrast to Judge Calmar’s ruling, Judge Barbara Bellis, the presiding asbestos docket judge in Bridgeport, denied a defendant’s challenge to the court’s personal jurisdiction in Rice v. Am. Talc Co., 2017 Conn. Super. LEXIS 4433 (Conn. Super. 2017). In Rice, Defendant Milwhite, argued that it never had any offices, employees, or sales agents in the state of Connecticut at any time; it had not made sales to any company in the state since the 1970s, and the few sales that the defendant made in Connecticut comprised less than one-tenth of one percent of its sales in any given year.
After considering these arguments, Judge Bellis concluded that if a reasonable expectation exists that a foreign corporation’s goods will be used or consumed in the state of Connecticut, then that corporation can expect to be sued in Connecticut. The plaintiff’s evidence showed that the defendant knew a shipment destination was Connecticut when it was selling its product to the distributor, and that it also knew the distributor’s customers included Connecticut consumers. As such, the court concluded, the defendant had sufficient minimum contacts with Connecticut to allow this court to exercise personal jurisdiction over it and denied Milwhite’s motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction. Finally, from an equitable standpoint, Judge Bellis further concluded it was fair to exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant in this case because: (1) it involved the plaintiff’s single injury, mesothelioma, and (2) for the plaintiff to maintain two or more actions against different parties and in multiple jurisdictions was inefficient and imposed on the plaintiff a much greater burden than the defendant faced by defending itself in Connecticut.
With the Reavis and Rice decisions clearly being at odds, it is critical that Defendants have familiarity with the local jurisdiction in which they have been sued when formulating defense strategy. Until the Appellate Court of Connecticut weighs in on this issue, inconsistent results can be expected in the lower courts.