Personal Jurisdiction challenges is one area of the law that I’ve found interesting since I took Dean Frank Newton’s conflicts of law class in law school.  Recently there have been a number of personal jurisdiction opinions that have come out.   I’ve summarized what I see as the highlights of some of those cases below:

• In Jackson v. Hoffman, the Fourteenth Court of Appeals held that the filing of a faulty affidavit by the defendant did not waive the jurisdiction challenge.  The court also held that the defendant did not waive the jurisdiction challenge by filing a motion for sanctions in the court of appeals after the plaintiff appealed the order granting the defendant’s special appearance.  The court’s opinion may be found here.
• In Zinc Nacional, S.A. v. Bouche Trucking, Inc., the Texas Supreme Court held that the mere act of sending goods through Texas does not establish personal jurisdiction under a specific contacts analysis.  The court’s opinion may be found here.
• In Touradji v. Beach Capital Partnership, L.P., the First Court of Appeals held that jurisdiction must be examined on a claim-by-claim basis insofar as examining specific jurisdiction.  The court further held that if the plaintiff does not plead sufficient jurisdictional facts, a defendant can meet its burden of negating jurisdiction merely by proving that it is not a Texas resident.  Finally, the court holds that unilateral acts of the plaintiff cannot be used to establish jurisdiction; it must be the defendant’s purposeful conduct that established personal jurisdiction.  The court examines a number of individual claims pleaded in this case, and in that regard the opinion may be of interest for those wanting a more detailed review.  The court’s opinion may be found here.
• In 2007 East Meadows, L.P. v. RCM Phoenix Partners, L.L.C., the Dallas Court of Appeals holds that specific jurisdiction is "dispute-specific."   The court futher holds that RCM Phoenix did not purposefully avail itself of Texas by using a third-party broker to market real property that was located in Indiana.  Finally, the court holds that where a contract gave the plaintiff the unilateral decision to select the location of the closing of the sale which never closed, the nonresident defendant could not be said to have purposefully availed itself of Texas law.  The court’s opinion may be found here.