The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on November 4, 2015 granted our motion to dismiss defendant Blain Supply, Inc. for lack of personal jurisdiction. This is a significant victory not only for our client, but for the entire defense bar. We argued that the court lacked general jurisdiction under Daimler AG v. Bauman because Blain Supply was a Wisconsin corporation with its principal place of business in Wisconsin. In response to our motion, the plaintiffs had argued that Blain Supply consented to jurisdiction because it was registered to do business in Illinois and had an Illinois registered agent for service of process, and therefore could not avail itself of our due process argument. We replied that such an analysis was irrelevant post-Daimler and Judge Kocoras agreed with our position and ruled that the fact that a non-resident corporation that is merely registered to do business in Illinois and has a registered agent here does not subject that corporation to general jurisdiction in Illinois.
Read the court’s decision here. (PDF opens in a new window.)