The Legacy of ‘International Shoe’ and the Future of Complex Litigation
David W. Ichel of X-Dispute LLC published an article in the Spring 2019 Issue of Judicature entitled “The Legacy of International Shoe and the Future of Complex Litigation.”
The following is an excerpt from the article,
In just a few years, the Supreme Court has meaningfully altered the landscape for establishing personal jurisdiction over corporations. Its quartet of unanimous and nearly unanimous decisions in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, Daimler AG v. Bauman, BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California substantially recalibrated the Fourteenth Amendment due process analysis for corporate personal jurisdiction established more than 80 years ago in International Shoe Co. v. Washington. Its more divided 4-2-3 decision in J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro during the same period has heightened concern about the realities of establishing jurisdiction over foreign companies in an increasingly global marketplace. These developments impact both state and corresponding federal district courts. This article examines these decisions’ potential impact on class actions and other complex litigation and provides specific recommendations to protect plaintiffs’ access to a reasonable forum that is also fair to the defendants.
Mr. Ichel was at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP for 37 years. His practice covered a wide variety of topics including securities, contract, commercial fraud, product liability/mass tort, insurance company insolvency, insurance coverage, antitrust and unfair trade practice, distributor termination, defamation and advertising/labeling. He is now a senior lecturing fellow at Duke Law School and in 2016 he founded X-Dispute LLC (David W. Ichel Dispute Resolution).
