Federal Judiciary

Motions to Transfer Denied; Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction Granted

By Michael C. Smith

Acceleron, LLC v. Egenera, Inc., 2009 WL 1606961(E.D.Tex. Jun 09, 2009) (NO. 6:08CV417)
Judge: Leonard Davis
Holding: Motions to Transfer DENIED; Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction GRANTED
Six defendants filed motions to transfer - the sixth also filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.  While the motions were originally premised on a prior-filed case in Delaware, while the motions were pending the Delaware action was dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, so Judge Davis analyzed the motions under traditional convenience standards.  (Well, perhaps "traditional" is not the right word - perhaps "current" would be better).  I won't go through the Court's full analysis, but essentially there wasn't much supporting a transfer to Delaware in the absence of the other case other than that most of the defendants were incorporated there, and the plaintiff was a Tyler company (with its only office and employee in Tyler).  So now showing Delaware was "clearly more convenient". 
With respect to Fujitsu's motion, the Court was not pleased with the procedural manner in which it was raised, noting as "highly irregular" and "highly suspect" under the local rules Fujitsu's late briefing on the issue.  But in the absence of any objection by the plaintiff, the court did not assign weight to this set of facts.  The basis for the motion was essentially that the Fujitsu entities sued had no contacts with Texas and had never sold any allegedly infringing products in Texas, and the Court noted that the plaintiff had not done anything (except browsing a website) to ascertain whether there were any such sales to carry its burden to show that jurisdiction was proper.  Under these facts, the Fujitsu entities were dismissed without prejudice, but the plaintiff was given 30 days to amend its answer and serve the proper Fujitsu entity.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).