Personal Jurisdiction and Substantive Legal Relations: Corporations, Conspiracies, and Agency

Abstract

What difference does it make, for purposes of asserting personal jurisdiction, that a defendant has substantive legal ties with other parties concededly subject to a court's jurisdiction? What effect do such affiliations have on the constitutional limits contained in the "minimum contacts" test' of "fair play and substantial justice"? In some situations, they apparently makes no difference. If a defendant's biological parent is subject to jurisdiction in a forum, it does not automatically subject the defendant to suit, even though the parent-child relationship is a legal as well as biological one. In other situations, a legal relationship does have jurisdictional significance. If a corporate defendant's parent is subject to suit, this may enhance the forum's ability to bring the corporate subsidiary before its courts.