Ahoy the ship! There’s personal jurisdiction.

On the topic of personal jurisdiction, recent Supreme Court cases emphasize that “[i]t is the defendant, not the plaintiff or third parties, who must create contacts with the forum State..” Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277 (2014).  An interesting test of that principle arose in Carmona v. Leo Ship Management, No. 18-20248 (May 10, 2019), in which a stevedore sued for injuries incurred in Houston while unloading pipe from a globe-circling freighter. He sued LSM, the company that by contract operated the M/V Komatsushima Star (right) (since, renamed the M/V Kacey, and moored in the Yellow Sea as of this post). LSM did not own the ship “and could not direct where it traveled, what it carried, or for whom it worked,” and thus tried to invoke Walden and related cases about jurisdiction arising from a “mere fortuity.”

The Fifth Circuit observed:

• “[A] defendant’s contacts with a forum and the purposefulness of those contacts are distinct–though often overlapping –inquiries. Although tortious conduct within a forum ensures the existence of contacts it does not always guarantee that such contacts were deliberate.” (citation omitted);
• “Especially considering that the contract was freely  terminable with two months’ notice, LSM was hardly compelled to travel to Texas against its will. Rather, it made a deliberate choice to keep its employees aboard a ship bound for Texas” and thus “purposely availed itself” of the Texas forum;
• But as to one of Carmona’s claims: “LSM presented undisputed evidence that a third party had stowed the pipes aboard the ship while it was outside the United States,” thus establishing that “the claim that the pipes were improperly stowed does not stem from LSM’s activities in Texas.”