Introduction to law and the legal system

¶ … Second Circuit should affirm the District Court's decision for several reasons. In order for a state to acquire personal jurisdiction over a litigant, generally that litigant must have done something to subject himself to the laws of the jurisdiction in question. It is possible for a litigant to become subject to jurisdiction without being physically present in a state. For example, a litigant who conducts business within a state, regardless of personal presence, will be subject to the laws of that jurisdiction. The first thing that a court looks at when determining jurisdiction in a diversity case is the long-arm statute of the forum state. Therefore, the Second Circuit must look at New York's long-arm statute to determine whether or not it has personal jurisdiction over King. The long-arm statute provides for jurisdiction when a litigant, personally or through an agent, causes a litigable action to occur within New York. The fact that King's website could be accessed by people in New York was not sufficient to say that he acted within the jurisdiction. Because neither King nor any of his agents ever took any action in the state of New York, New York lacked jurisdiction. Furthermore, King's website contained a disclaimer that his website was targeted to the Columbia, Missouri audience, only. In addition, King took steps to ensure that visitors to his website would not confuse him with the club owned by Bensusan.

8. Complete diversity means that none of the plaintiffs can be from the same jurisdiction as any of the defendants, but does not mean that plaintiffs or defendants can not share the same jurisdiction. In addition, one must keep in mind that corporate litigants are considered citizens of the jurisdiction that contains their principal places of business and of the jurisdiction in which they have been incorporated. Because all of the possible defendants, Pappy's Auto Sales, National Motors Corporation, and Tom Jones are all citizens of Kentucky, they cannot sued in federal court by Leonard Woodrock or Tom Jones. The fact that, against completely diverse defendants, Woodrock and Jones could combine their claims to meet the amount in controversy is inconsequential, because the parties lack diversity of citizenship.

9. There are several factors that should be taken into consideration in deciding whether the District of Columbia can, for diversity purposes, be regarded as a state. The most important factor is whether the constitutional diversity requirement would have a substantive impact on the litigants seeking redress in a certain type of court. Because citizens of the District of Columbia are already entitled to bring suit in federal courts, allowing them to be considered citizens of a state for the purpose of establishing diversity jurisdiction does not allow them entry into a different court system. Even more important is the fact that the legislature enacted a law that permitted the District of Columbia and other U.S. territories to be treated as states for the purpose of diversity jurisdiction. Based upon this law, which expands the definition of the word state in the Constitution, it seems clear that the D.C. should be considered a state for diversity jurisdiction purposes. To bolster that idea, it is important to keep in mind that when the Constitution was written, the U.S. did not hold territories; even D.C. had not yet been created. Therefore, at the time it was written, the constitutional language referring to states would have covered all U.S. citizens living in U.S. territory. It seems unlikely that the founding fathers would have desired to exclude those living in D.C., who were most likely to be people working for the government, from the general protections granted to most Americans. Taken together, these concepts support the notion that a person from D.C. should be treated like a state citizen for purposes of diversity jurisdiction.