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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 11–965
_________________
DAIMLER AG, PETITIONER v. BARBARABAUMAN et
al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[January 14, 2014]
Justice Ginsburg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the
authority of a court in the United States to entertain a claim
brought by foreign plaintiffs against a foreign defendant based on
events occurring entirely outside the United States. The litigation
commenced in 2004, when twenty-two Argentinian residents[
1] filed a complaint in the United
States District Court for the Northern District of California
against DaimlerChrysler Aktiengesellschaft (Daimler),[
2] a German public stock company,
headquartered in Stuttgart, that manufactures Mercedes-Benz
vehicles in Germany. The complaint alleged that during
Argentina’s 1976–1983 “Dirty War,”
Daimler’s Argentinian subsidiary, Mercedes-Benz Argentina (MB
Argentina) collaborated with state security forces to kidnap,
detain, torture, and kill certain MB Argentina workers, among them,
plaintiffs or persons closely related to plaintiffs. Damages for
the alleged human-rights violations were sought from Daimler under
the laws of the United States, California, and Argentina.
Jurisdiction over the lawsuit was predicated on the California
contacts of Mercedes-Benz USA, LLC (MBUSA),a subsidiary of Daimler
incorporated in Delaware withits principal place of business in New
Jersey. MBUSA distributes Daimler-manufactured vehicles to
independ-ent dealerships throughout the United States, including
California.
The question presented
is whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
precludes the District Court from exercising jurisdiction over
Daimler in this case, given the absence of any California
connectionto the atrocities, perpetrators, or victims described in
the complaint. Plaintiffs invoked the court’s general or
all-purpose jurisdiction. California, they urge, is a place where
Daimler may be sued on any and all claims against it, wherever in
the world the claims may arise. For example, as plaintiffs’
counsel affirmed, under the proffered jurisdictional theory, if a
Daimler-manufactured vehicle overturned in Poland, injuring a
Polish driver and passenger, the injured parties could maintain a
design defect suit in California. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 28–29.
Exercises of personal jurisdiction so exorbitant, we hold, are
barred by due process constraints on the assertion of adjudicatory
authority.
In Goodyear Dunlop
Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. ___ (2011),
we addressed the distinction between general or all-purpose
jurisdiction, and specific or conduct-linked jurisdiction. As to
the former, we held that a court may assert jurisdiction over a
foreign corporation “to hear any and all claims against
[it]” only when the corporation’s affiliations with the
State in which suit is brought areso constant and pervasive
“as to render [it] essentially at home in the forum
State.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2). Instructed by Goodyear,
we conclude Daimler is not “at home” in California, and
cannot be sued there for injuries plaintiffs attribute to MB
Argentina’s conduct in Argentina.
I
In 2004, plaintiffs
(respondents here) filed suit in the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California, alleging that MB Argentina
collaborated with Argentinian state security forces to kidnap,
detain, torture, and kill plaintiffs and their relatives during the
military dictatorship in place there from 1976 through 1983, a
period known as Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Based on
those allegations, plaintiffs asserted claims under the Alien Tort
Statute, 28 U. S. C. §1350, and the Torture Victim
Protection Act of 1991, 106Stat. 73, note following 28
U. S. C. §1350, as well as claims for wrongful death
and intentional infliction of emotional distress under the laws of
California and Argentina. The incidents recounted in the complaint
center on MB Argentina’s plant in Gonzalez Catan, Argentina;
no part of MB Argentina’s alleged col-laboration with
Argentinian authorities took place in Cali-fornia or anywhere else
in the United States.
Plaintiffs’
operative complaint names only one corporate defendant: Daimler,
the petitioner here. Plaintiffs seek to hold Daimler vicariously
liable for MB Argentina’s alleged malfeasance. Daimler is a
German Aktiengesellschaft (public stock company) that manufactures
Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Germany and has its headquarters in
Stuttgart. At times relevant to this case, MB Argentina was a
subsidiary wholly owned by Daimler’s predecessor in
interest.
Daimler moved to
dismiss the action for want of personal jurisdiction. Opposing the
motion, plaintiffs submitted declarations and exhibits purporting
to demonstrate the presence of Daimler itself in California.
Alternatively, plaintiffs maintained that jurisdiction over Daimler
could be founded on the California contacts of MBUSA, a distinct
corporate entity that, according to plaintiffs, should be treated
as Daimler’s agent for jurisdictional purposes.
MBUSA, an indirect
subsidiary of Daimler, is a Delaware limited liability
corporation.[
3] MBUSA serves as
Daimler’s exclusive importer and distributor in the United
States, purchasing Mercedes-Benz automobiles from Daimler in
Germany, then importing those vehicles, and ultimately distributing
them to independent dealerships located throughout the Nation.
Although MBUSA’s principal place of business is in New
Jersey, MBUSA has multiple California-based facilities, including a
regional office in Costa Mesa, a Vehicle Preparation Center in
Carson, and a Classic Center in Irvine. According to the record
developed below, MBUSA is the largest supplier of luxury vehicles
to the California market. In particular, over 10% of all sales of
new vehicles in the United States take place in California, and
MBUSA’s California sales account for 2.4% of Daimler’s
worldwide sales.
The relationship
between Daimler and MBUSA is delineated in a General Distributor
Agreement, which sets forth requirements for MBUSA’s
distribution of Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the United States. That
agreementestablished MBUSA as an “independent
contracto[r]”that “buy[s] and sell[s] [vehicles]
. . . as an independent business for [its] own
account.” App. 179a. The agreement “does not make
[MBUSA] . . . a general or special agent, partner, joint
venturer or employee of DAIMLERCHRYSLER or any DaimlerChrysler
Group Company”; MBUSA “ha[s] no authority to make
binding obligations for or act on behalf of DAIMLERCHRYSLER or any
DaimlerChrysler Group Company.” Ibid.
After allowing
jurisdictional discovery on plaintiffs’ agency allegations,
the District Court granted Daimler’s motion to dismiss.
Daimler’s own affiliations with California, the court first
determined, were insufficient to support the exercise of
all-purpose jurisdiction over the corporation. Bauman v.
DaimlerChrysler AG, No. C–04–00194 RMW (ND Cal., Nov.
22, 2005), App. to Pet. for Cert. 111a–112a, 2005 WL 3157472,
*9–*10. Next, the court declined to attribute MBUSA’s
California contacts to Daimler on an agency theory, concluding that
plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that MBUSA acted as
Daimler’s agent. Id., at 117a, 133a, 2005 WL 3157472, *12,
*19; Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler AG, No. C–04–00194 RMW
(ND Cal., Feb. 12, 2007), App. to Pet. for Cert. 83a–85a,
2007 WL 486389, *2.
The Ninth Circuit at
first affirmed the District Court’s judgment. Addressing
solely the question of agency, the Court of Appeals held that
plaintiffs had not shown the existence of an agency relationship of
the kind that might warrant attribution of MBUSA’s contacts
to Daimler. Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 579 F. 3d 1088,
1096–1097 (2009). Judge Reinhardt dissented. In his view, the
agency test was satisfied and considerations of
“reason-ableness” did not bar the exercise of
jurisdiction. Id., at 1098–1106. Granting plaintiffs’
petition for rehearing, the panel withdrew its initial opinion and
replaced it with one authored by Judge Reinhardt, which elaborated
on reasoning he initially expressed in dissent. Bauman v.
Daimler-Chrysler Corp., 644 F. 3d 909 (CA9 2011).
Daimler petitioned for
rehearing and rehearing en banc, urging that the exercise of
personal jurisdiction over Daimler could not be reconciled with
this Court’s decision in Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations,
S. A. v. Brown, 564 U. S. ___ (2011). Over the dissent of
eight judges, the Ninth Circuit denied Daimler’s petition.
See Bauman v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 676 F. 3d 774 (2011)
(O’Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en
banc).
We granted certiorari
to decide whether, consistent with the Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, Daimler is amenable to suit in California
courts for claims involving only foreign plaintiffs and conduct
occurring entirely abroad. 569 U. S. ___ (2013).
II
Federal courts
ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their
jurisdiction over persons. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 4(k)(1)(A)
(service of process is effective to establish personal jurisdiction
over a defendant “who is subject to the jurisdiction of a
court of general jurisdiction in the state where the district court
is located”). Under California’s long-arm statute,
California state courts may exercise personal jurisdiction
“on any basis not inconsistent with the Constitution of this
state or of the United States.” Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann.
§410.10 (West 2004). California’s long-arm statute
allows the exercise of personal jurisdiction to the full extent
permissible under the U. S. Constitution. We therefore inquire
whether the Ninth Circuit’s holding comports with the limits
imposed by federal due process. See, e.g., Burger King Corp. v.
Rudzewicz, 471 U. S. 462, 464 (1985) .
III
In Pennoyer v. Neff,
95 U. S. 714 (1878) , decided shortly after the enactment of
the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court held that a tribunal’s
jurisdiction over persons reaches no farther than the geographic
bounds of the forum. See id., at 720 (“The authority of every
tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the
State in which it is established.”). See also Shaffer v.
Heitner, 433 U. S. 186, 197 (1977) (Under Pennoyer, “any
attempt ‘directly’ to assert extraterritorial
jurisdiction over persons or property would offend sister States
and exceed the inherent limits of the State’s power.”).
In time, however, that strict territorial approach yielded to a
less rigid understanding, spurred by “changes in the
technology of transportation and communication, and the tremendous
growth of interstate business activity.” Burnham v. Superior
Court of Cal., County of Marin, 495 U. S. 604, 617 (1990)
(opinion of Scalia, J.).
“The canonical
opinion in this area remains International Shoe [Co. v.
Washington], 326 U. S. 310 [(1945)], in which we held that a
State may authorize its courts to exercise personal jurisdiction
over an out-of-state defendant if the defendant has ‘certain
minimum contacts with [the State] such that the maintenance of the
suit does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and
substantial justice.” ’ ” Goodyear, 564
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (quoting International Shoe,
326 U. S., at 316). Following International Shoe, “the
relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation,
rather than the mutually exclusive sovereignty of the States on
which the rules of Pennoyer rest, became the central concern of the
inquiry into personal jurisdiction.” Shaffer, 433 U. S.,
at 204.
International
Shoe’s conception of “fair play and substantial
justice” presaged the development of two categories of
personal jurisdiction. The first category is represented by
International Shoe itself, a case in which the in-state activities
of the corporate defendant “ha[d] not only been continuous
and systematic, but also g[a]ve rise to the liabilities sued
on.” 326 U. S., at 317.[
4] International Shoe recognized, as well, that “the
commission of some single or occasional acts of the corporate agent
in a state” may sometimes be enough to subject the
corporation to jurisdiction in that State’s tribunals with
respect to suits relating to that in-state activity. Id., at 318.
Adjudicatory author-ity of this order, in which the suit
“aris[es] out of orrelate[s] to the defendant’s
contacts with the forum,” Heli-copteros Nacionales de
Colombia, S. A. v. Hall, 466 U. S. 408 , n. 8
(1984), is today called “specific jurisdiction.” See
Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) (citing von
Mehren & Trautman, Jurisdiction to Adjudicate: A Suggested
Analysis, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1144–1163 (1966)
(hereinafter von Mehren & Trautman)).
International Shoe
distinguished between, on the one hand, exercises of specific
jurisdiction, as just described, and on the other, situations where
a foreign corporation’s “continuous corporate
operations within a state [are] so substantial and of such a nature
as to justify suit against it on causes of action arising from
dealings entirely distinct from those activities.” 326
U. S., at 318. As we have since explained, “[a] court
may assert general jurisdiction over foreign (sister-state or
foreign-country) corporations to hear any and all claims against
them when their affiliations with the State are so
‘continuous and systematic’ as to render them
essentially at home in the forum State.” Goodyear, 564
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2); see id., at ___ (slip op., at
7); Helicopteros, 466 U. S., at 414, n. 9.[
5]
Since International
Shoe, “specific jurisdiction has become the centerpiece of
modern jurisdiction theory, while general jurisdiction [has played]
a reduced role.” Goodyear, 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op.,
at 8) (quoting Twitchell, The Myth of General Jurisdiction, 101
Harv. L. Rev. 610, 628 (1988)). International Shoe’s
momentous departure from Pennoyer’s rigidly territorial
focus, we have noted, unleashed a rapid expansion of
tribunals’ ability to hear claims against out-of-state
defendants when the episode-in-suit occurred in the forum or the
defendant purposefully availed itself of the forum.[
6] Our subsequent decisions have continued to
bear out the prediction that “specific jurisdiction will come
into sharper relief and form a considerably more significant part
of the scene.” von Mehren & Trautman 1164.[
7]
Our post-International
Shoe opinions on general jurisdiction, by comparison, are few.
“[The Court’s] 1952 decision in Perkins v. Benguet
Consol. Mining Co. remains the textbook case of general
jurisdiction appropriately exercised over a foreign corporation
that has not consented to suit in the forum.” Goodyear, 564
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11) (internal quotation marks and
brackets omitted). The defendant in Perkins, Benguet, was a company
incorporated under the laws of the Philippines, where it operated
gold and silver mines. Benguet ceased its mining operations during
the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in World War II; its
president moved to Ohio, where he kept an office, maintained the
company’s files, and oversaw the company’s activities.
Perkins v. Benguet Consol. Mining Co., 342 U. S. 437, 448
(1952) . The plaintiff, an Ohio resident, sued Benguet on a claim
that neither arose in Ohio nor related to the corporation’s
activities in that State. We held that the Ohio courts could
exercise general jurisdiction over Benguet without offending due
process. Ibid. That was so, we later noted, because “Ohio was
the corporation’s principal, if temporary, place of
business.” Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U. S.
770 , n. 11 (1984).[
8]
The next case on point,
Helicopteros, 466 U. S. 408 , arose from a helicopter crash in
Peru. Four U. S. citizens perished in that accident; their
survivors and representatives brought suit in Texas state court
against the helicopter’s owner and operator, a Colombian
corporation. That company’s contacts with Texas were confined
to “sending its chief executive officer to Houston for a
contract-negotiation session; accepting into its New York bank
account checks drawn on a Houston bank; purchasing helicopters,
equipment, and training services from [a Texas-based helicopter
company] for substantial sums; and sending personnel to [Texas] for
training.” Id., at 416. Notably, those contacts bore no
apparent relationship to the accident that gave rise to the suit.
We held that the company’s Texas connections did not resemble
the “continuous and systematic general business contacts
. . . found to exist in Perkins.” Ibid.
“[M]ere purchases, even if occurring at regular
intervals,” we clarified, “are not enough to warrant a
State’s assertion of in personam jurisdiction over a
nonresident corporation in a cause of action not related to those
purchase transactions.” Id., at 418.
Most recently, in
Goodyear, we answered the question: “Are foreign subsidiaries
of a United States parent corporation amenable to suit in state
court on claims unrelated to any activity of the subsidiaries in
the forum State? ” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at
1). That case arose from a bus accident outside Paris that killed
two boys from North Carolina. The boys’ parents brought a
wrongful-death suit in North Carolina state court alleging that the
bus’s tire was defectively manufactured. The complaint named
as defendants not only The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
(Goodyear), an Ohio corporation, but also Goodyear’s Turkish,
French, and Luxembourgian subsidiaries. Those foreign subsidiaries,
which manufactured tires for sale in Europe and Asia, lacked any
affiliation with North Caro-lina. A small percentage of tires
manufactured by the foreign subsidiaries were distributed in North
Carolina, however, and on that ground, the North Carolina Court of
Appeals held the subsidiaries amenable to the general jurisdiction
of North Carolina courts.
We reversed, observing
that the North Carolina court’s analysis “elided the
essential difference between case-specific and all-purpose
(general) jurisdiction.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 10).
Although the placement of a product into the stream of commerce
“may bolster an affiliation germane to specific
jurisdiction,” we explained, such contacts “do not
warrant a determination that, based on those ties, the forum has
general jurisdiction over a defendant.” Id., at ___ (slip
op., at 10–11). As International Shoe itself teaches, a
corporation’s “continuous activity of some sorts within
a state is not enough to support the demand that the corporation be
amenable to suits unrelated to that activity.” 326
U. S., at 318. Because Goodyear’s foreign subsidiaries
were “in no sense at home in North Carolina,” we held,
those subsidiaries could not be required to submit to the general
jurisdiction of that State’s courts. 564 U. S., at ___
(slip op., at 13). See also J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v.
Nicastro, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting)
(slip op., at 7) (noting unanimous agreement that a foreign
manufacturer, which engaged an independent U. S.-based
distributor to sell its machines throughout the United States,
could not be exposed to all-purpose jurisdiction in New Jersey
courts based on those contacts).
As is evident from
Perkins, Helicopteros, and Goodyear, general and specific
jurisdiction have followed markedly different trajectories
post-International Shoe. Specific jurisdiction has been cut loose
from Pennoyer’s sway, but we have declined to stretch general
jurisdiction beyond limits traditionally recognized.[
9] As this Court has increasingly trained on
the “relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the
litigation,” Shaffer, 433 U. S., at 204, i.e., specific
jurisdiction,[
10] general
jurisdiction has cometo occupy a less dominant place in the
contemporary scheme.[
11]
IV
With this background,
we turn directly to the question whether Daimler’s
affiliations with California are sufficient to subject it to the
general (all-purpose) personal jurisdiction of that State’s
courts. In the proceedings below, the parties agreed on, or failed
to contest, certain points we now take as given. Plaintiffs have
never attempted to fit this case into the specific jurisdiction
category. Nor did plaintiffs challenge on appeal the District
Court’s holding that Daimler’s own contacts with
California were, by themselves, too sporadic to justify the
exercise of general jurisdiction. While plaintiffs ultimately
persuaded the Ninth Circuit to impute MBUSA’s California
contacts to Daimler on an agency theory, at no point have they
maintained that MBUSA is an alter ego of Daimler.
Daimler, on the other
hand, failed to object below to plaintiffs’ assertion that
the California courts could exercise all-purpose jurisdiction over
MBUSA.[
12] But see Brief for
Petitioner 23, n. 4 (suggestion that in light of Goodyear,
MBUSA may not be amenable to general jurisdiction in California);
Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 16, n. 5 (hereinafter
U. S. Brief) (same). We will assume then, for purposes of this
decision only, that MBUSA qualifies as at home in California.
A
In sustaining the
exercise of general jurisdiction over Daimler, the Ninth Circuit
relied on an agency theory, determining that MBUSA acted as
Daimler’s agent for jurisdictional purposes and then
attributing MBUSA’s California contacts to Daimler. The Ninth
Circuit’s agency analysis derived from Circuit precedent
consideringprincipally whether the subsidiary “performs
services that are sufficiently important to the foreign corporation
that if it did not have a representative to perform them, the
corporation’s own officials would undertake to perform
substantially similar services.” 644 F. 3d, at 920
(quoting Doe v. Unocal Corp., 248 F. 3d 915, 928 (CA9 2001);
emphasis deleted).
This Court has not yet
addressed whether a foreign corporation may be subjected to a
court’s general jurisdiction based on the contacts of its
in-state subsidiary. Daimler argues, and several Courts of Appeals
have held, that a subsidiary’s jurisdictional contacts can be
imputed to its parent only when the former is so dominated by the
latter as to be its alter ego. The Ninth Circuit adopted a less
rigorous test based on what it described as an “agency”
relationship. Agencies, we note, come in many sizes and shapes:
“One may be an agent for some business purposes and not
others so that the fact that one may be an agent for one purpose
does not make him or her an agent for every purpose.” 2A C.
J. S., Agency §43, p. 367 (2013) (footnote omitted).[
13] A subsidiary, for example, might
be its parent’s agent for claims arising in the place where
the subsidiary operates, yet not its agent regarding claims arising
elsewhere. The Court of Appeals did not advert to that prospect.
But we need not pass judgment on invocation of an agency theory in
the context of general jurisdiction, for in no event can the
appeals court’s analysis be sustained.
The Ninth
Circuit’s agency finding rested primarily on its observation
that MBUSA’s services were “important” to
Daimler, as gauged by Daimler’s hypothetical readiness to
perform those services itself if MBUSA did not exist. Formulated
this way, the inquiry into importance stacks the deck, for it will
always yield a pro-jurisdiction answer: “Anything a
corporation does through an independent contractor, subsidiary, or
distributor is presumably something that the corporation would do
‘by other means’ if the independent contractor,
subsidiary, or distributor did not exist.” 676 F. 3d, at
777 (O’Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en
banc).[
14] The Ninth
Circuit’s agency theory thus appears to subject foreign
corporations to general jurisdiction whenever they have an in-state
subsidiary or affiliate, an outcome that would sweep beyond even
the “sprawling view of general jurisdiction” we
rejected in Goodyear. 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at
12).[
15]
B
Even if we were to
assume that MBUSA is at home in California, and further to assume
MBUSA’s contacts are imputable to Daimler, there would still
be no basis to subject Daimler to general jurisdiction in
California, for Daimler’s slim contacts with the State hardly
render it at home there.[
16]
Goodyear made clear
that only a limited set of affiliations with a forum will render a
defendant amenable to all-purpose jurisdiction there. “For an
individual, the paradigm forum for the exercise of general
jurisdiction is the individual’s domicile; for a corporation,
it is an equivalent place, one in which the corporation is fairly
regarded as at home.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7)
(citing Brilmayer et al., A General Look at General
Jurisdiction, 66 Texas L. Rev. 721, 728 (1988)). With respect
to a corporation, the place of incorporation and principal place of
business are “paradig[m] . . . bases for general
jurisdiction.” Id., at 735. See also Twitchell, 101 Harv.
L. Rev., at 633. Those affiliations have the virtue of being
unique—that is, each ordinarily indicates only one
place—as well as easily ascertainable. Cf. Hertz Corp. v.
Friend, 559 U. S. 77, 94 (2010) (“Simple jurisdictional
rules . . . promote greater predictability.”).
These bases afford plaintiffs recourse to at least one clear and
certain forum in which a corporate defendant may be sued on any and
all claims.
Goodyear did not hold
that a corporation may be subject to general jurisdiction only in a
forum where it is incor-porated or has its principal place of
business; it simply typed those places paradigm all-purpose forums.
Plaintiffs would have us look beyond the exemplar bases Goodyear
identified, and approve the exercise of general jurisdiction in
every State in which a corporation “engages in a substantial,
continuous, and systematic course of business.” Brief for
Respondents 16–17, and nn. 7–8. That formulation,
we hold, is unacceptably grasping.
As noted, see supra, at
7–8, the words “continuous and systematic” were
used in International Shoe to describe instances in which the
exercise of specific jurisdiction would be appropriate. See 326
U. S., at 317 (jurisdiction can be asserted where a
corporation’s in-state activities are not only
“continuous and systematic, but also give rise to the
liabilities sued on”).[
17] Turning to all-purpose jurisdiction, in contrast,
International Shoe speaks of “instances in which the
continuous corporate operations within a state [are] so substantial
and of such a nature as to justify suit . . . on causes
of action arising from dealings en-tirely distinct from those
activities.” Id., at 318 (emphasis added). See also
Twitchell, Why We Keep Doing Business With Doing-Business
Jurisdiction, 2001 U. Chi. Legal Forum 171, 184 (International Shoe
“is clearly not saying that dispute-blind jurisdiction exists
whenever ‘continuous and systematic’ contacts are
found.”).[
18]
Accordingly, the inquiry under Goodyear is not whether a foreign
corporation’s in-forum contacts can be said to be in some
sense “continuous and systematic,” it is whether that
corporation’s “affiliations with the State are so
‘continuous and systematic’ as to render [it]
essentially at home in the forum State.” 564 U. S., at
___ (slip op., at 2).[
19]
Here, neither Daimler
nor MBUSA is incorporated in California, nor does either entity
have its principal place of business there. If Daimler’s
California activities sufficed to allow adjudication of this
Argentina-rooted case in California, the same global reach would
presumably be available in every other State in which MBUSA’s
sales are sizable. Such exorbitant exercises of all-purpose
jurisdiction would scarcely permit out-of-state defendants
“to structure their primary conduct with some minimum
assurance as to where that conduct will and will not render them
liable to suit.” Burger King Corp., 471 U. S., at 472
(internal quotation marks omitted).
It was therefore error
for the Ninth Circuit to conclude that Daimler, even with
MBUSA’s contacts attributed to it, was at home in California,
and hence subject to suit there on claims by foreign plaintiffs
having nothing to do with anything that occurred or had its
principal impact in California.[
20]
C
Finally, the
transnational context of this dispute bears attention. The Court of
Appeals emphasized, as supportive of the exercise of general
jurisdiction, plaintiffs’ assertion of claims under the Alien
Tort Statute (ATS), 28 U. S. C. §1350, and the
Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991 (TVPA), 106Stat. 73, note
following 28 U. S. C. §1350. See 644 F. 3d, at
927 (“American federal courts, be they in California or any
other state, have a strong interest in adjudicating and redressing
international human rights abuses.”). Recent decisions of
this Court, however, have rendered plaintiffs’ ATS and TVPA
claims infirm. See Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 569
U. S. ___, ___ (2013) (slip op., at 14) (presumption against
extra-territorial application controls claims under the ATS);
Mohamad v. Palestinian Authority, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012)
(slip op., at 1) (only natural persons are subject to liability
under the TVPA).
The Ninth Circuit,
moreover, paid little heed to the risks to international comity its
expansive view of general jurisdiction posed. Other nations do not
share the uninhibited approach to personal jurisdiction advanced by
the Court of Appeals in this case. In the European Union, for
example, a corporation may generally be sued in the nation in which
it is “domiciled,” a term defined to refer only to the
location of the corporation’s “statutory seat,”
“central administration,” or “principal place of
business.” European Parliament and Council Reg. 1215/2012,
Arts. 4(1), and 63(1), 2012 O. J. (L. 351) 7, 18. See also id.,
Art. 7(5), 2012 O. J. 7 (as to “a dispute arising out of the
operations of a branch, agency or other establishment,” a
corporation may be sued “in the courts for the place where
the branch, agency or other establishment is situated”
(emphasis added)). The Solicitor General informs us, in this
regard, that “foreign governments’ objections to some
domestic courts’ expansive views of general jurisdiction have
in the past impeded negotiations of international agreements on the
reciprocal recognition and enforcement of judgments.”
U. S. Brief 2 (citing Juenger, The American Law of General
Jurisdiction, 2001 U. Chi. Legal Forum 141, 161–162). See
also U. S. Brief 2 (expressing concern thatunpredictable
applications of general jurisdiction based on activities of
U. S.-based subsidiaries could discourage foreign investors);
Brief for Respondents 35 (acknowledging that “doing
business” basis for general jurisdiction has led to
“international friction”). Considerations of
international rapport thus reinforce our determination that
subjecting Daimler to the general jurisdiction of courts in
California would not accord with the “fair play and
substantial justice” due process demands. International Shoe,
326 U. S., at 316 (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U. S.
457, 463 (1940) ).
* * *
For the reasons
stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit is
Reversed.