Secured Motion to Dismiss: Personal Jurisdiction in High-Value RV Collision Case

Claims Alleged: Strict Liability, Negligence, Breach of Implied Warranty of Merchantability and Fitness, Breach of Express Warrant, and Breach of Contract.

The Overview:

Partner Melanie Rose and her Associate Duncan Campbell recently prevailed on a motion to dismiss due to lack of personal jurisdiction in a high-value lawsuit arising from an RV collision in Southern Oregon. The underlying facts of the lawsuit involved the sale of an RV and installation of a “hitch” onto a truck—all of which occurred in California. In Oregon, for a Court to establish jurisdiction over the defendant, there must be personal jurisdiction, which is founded on a relationship between the parties, claims, and forum. Read on to see how the Court granted Melanie and Duncan’s motion to dismiss all claims against their client.

Damages Alleged:

The two plaintiffs alleged spinal sprain/strains and cervical spine disc injuries, resulting in radiculopathy, and claimed over $1.2 million in damages.

The Background:

Melanie and Duncan’s client sells RVs in Southern California and is headquartered and incorporated in California. Their client sold an RV to Plaintiffs in California. Plaintiff alleged that their client installed a “hitch” onto Plaintiffs’ truck and assembled the “wedge” portion onto the hitch. As Plaintiffs were driving along I-5 in Southern Oregon, they alleged that the arm/wedge combination “failed” causing a loss of control and collision at highway speed, which injured Plaintiffs.

Plaintiff’s Theme:

Plaintiffs claimed that Melanie and Duncan’s clients defectively installed the arm/wedge combination. Plaintiffs brought suit in Oregon, claiming that Melanie and Duncan’s client was subject to being sued in Oregon because the collision occurred in Oregon, and because of two prior unrelated RV deliveries to addresses in Oregon.   

Our Strategy:

In their preliminary investigation of this case, while the collision of the RV happened in Oregon, Melanie felt strongly that there would not be personal jurisdiction in Oregon based on a recent Oregon Supreme Court decision interpreting the scope of personal jurisdiction in cases involving the out-of-state sale and delivery of a product. Both the purchase of the RV and the alleged acts of Melanie and Duncan’s clients occurred in California.

With this seminal case on personal jurisdiction in-hand, Duncan crafted excellent briefing, arguing that their client’s contacts with the state of Oregon were incidental at best and did not create a constitutional foundation for their client to be exposed to suit in Oregon. Duncan then provided the court with a clear roadmap of this analysis at oral argument leading to the conclusion that Plaintiffs’ claims must be dismissed.

After taking the motion under advisement for a few days, Melanie and Duncan received the Judge’s opinion, citing heavily to the case law that Melanie identified. Their motion was fully granted, dismissing their client from the suit.    

The Outcome:

Melanie and Duncan used a Rule 21 Motion to Dismiss to demonstrate that Oregon did not have personal jurisdiction over their client, because their client did not have the “minimum contacts” necessary with Oregon to anticipate a lawsuit in Oregon when all of the activities complained of occurred in California. They were able to point the trial court to recent case law from the Oregon Supreme Court supporting that the two incidental and unrelated deliveries of RVs to addresses in Oregon did not create the necessary “minimum contacts” by their client with the state of Oregon to give rise to Oregon jurisdiction over the Plaintiffs’ claims when Plaintiffs’ claims did not arise from those deliveries.  

As a result of the excellent briefing and persuasive oral argument Melanie and Duncan were able to convince the Court that jurisdiction in Oregon was not proper as to Plaintiffs’ claims, resulting in dismissal.

Issues of lack of jurisdiction must be addressed in the first pleading, or they are waived. It is not enough that an injury occurs in one state for a business to expect to be subject to that state’s jurisdiction. A careful analysis of the business’s “contacts” with the forum state and how they relate to the claims raised by a particular Plaintiff must be undergone to evaluate whether jurisdiction is proper.