Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court

Bristol-Myers is a large pharmaceutical company that is incorporated in Delaware and has its principal place of business in New York. The company manufactured and distributed the blood-thinning drug Plavix. A group of people who claimed they had been injured by taking Plavix, consisting of 86 California residents and 592 residents of other states, sued Bristol-Myers in California. Bristol-Myers sought to dismiss the claims of the non-California resident plaintiffs on the ground that the courts of California, a state where the company was neither incorporated nor headquartered, lacked personal jurisdiction over the company with respect to claimants who were not injured in California.

The California courts initially held that California had "general jurisdiction" over Bristol-Myers based on the company's extensive business ties with California. Subsequently, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Daimler AG v. Bauman, which held that a corporation is ordinarily subject to general jurisdiction only in its state of incorporation and the state where it maintains its principal Place of business. Following Daimler, the California courts determined that they did not have general jurisdiction over Bristol-Myers. However, the California Supreme Court upheld specific jurisdiction in this case, as to both the resident and non-resident plaintiffs.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the California Supreme Court's decision.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, which was joined by all but one of the Justices.[1]

The Court held that California state courts did not have jurisdiction over Bristol-Myers with respect to the non-residents' claims. Specific jurisdiction may exist only where the events underlying the lawsuit arise out of or relate to the defendant's contact with the forum state. Here, the non-resident plaintiffs were not prescribed Plavix in California, did not ingest it in California, and were not injured in California, nor was the drug manufactured in the state. The necessary affiliation between these plaintiffs' claims and the defendant's activities within the forum were thus lacking. The facts that other plaintiffs purchased the drug and were injured in California, and that Bristol-Myers engages in extensive research activities in California unrelated to Plavix, were irrelevant.

The Court concluded that its decision did not prevent the members of the plaintiff class from pursuing their claims. The options included bringing suit on behalf of all the claimants in Delaware or New York, or separate suits in the various states where different claimants reside. In addition, because the decision was based on application of the Due Process Clause to state courts, the Court reserved decision on whether the same jurisdictional limitations would apply to an action brought in federal court.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. She found nothing unfair or contrary to due process in allowing the claims of a nationwide class of people allegedly injured by the same conduct of the same defendant, which is a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company doing business nationwide, to be brought in a single litigation. The jurisdictional limitations announced in this case, in Sotomayor's view, would result in unnecessary multiple litigation as cases are brought in multiple states, and may deter some injured parties from pursuing their claims at all.

• Daimler AG v. Bauman

• Text of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 582 U.S. ___ (2017) is available from:  Justia  Oyez (oral argument audio)  Supreme Court (slip opinion) 
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