Due Process and Long-Arm Statutes

State long arm statutes: A state long-arm statute (LA) is a statute that authorizes a state’s courts to exercise personal jurisdiction (PJ) over a person or entity. If PJ falls outside of the LA, then there’s no PJ.

Analyze both DP and LA: Analysis of just the state LA is insufficient; instead, to find PJ, both the long-arm statute and Due Process must be satisfied. You gotta satisfy both.

What about federal court? We’ll soon learn that Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(A) instructs federal courts to analyze PJ in federal court the same as the corresponding state court: LA + DP. But Rule 4 has extra bases for PJ that we’ll study later.

The chart to the left provides four examples of hypothetical long-arm statutes and how they relate to Due Process under the 14^th amendment.

• LA-1 is a subset of DP. An example would be an LA that only permitted “PJ over out-of-state persons who get into car accidents in this state.”  If you fall within both LA-1 and DP, PJ is ok.
• LA-2 falls partially inside of DP (as a subset) and partially outside.  An example would be an LA that permitted “PJ over all out-of-state companies that commit torts.”  DP would permit PJ over some such activities but not over others.  To find PJ, you’d have to fall within LA-2 as well as DP.
• LA-3 is an example of a “co-extensive” or “unenumerated” long-arm statute.  A number of state long-arms simply indicate that courts of the state may exercise personal jurisdiction to the full extent of Due Process.
• LA-4 is broader than DP (and thus includes DP as a subset!)  An example would be an LA that permitted “PJ over anyone alive.”  To the extent that the particular defendant fell inside the DP circle, personal jurisdiction would satisfy both LA-4 and DP.  But if the particular defendant fell outside the DP circle, then no PJ.