Novo Nordisk A/S v. Lukas-Werner

Case Updates

The U.S. Chamber urged the Supreme Court to review this personal jurisdiction case in order to clarify the contours of the so-called “stream of commerce” theory of jurisdiction. As the Chamber argues in its brief, the confusion stemming from the Court's fractured opinions on this issue—most recently in J. McIntrye Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, 131 S. Ct. 2780 (2011)—“has deprived companies of essential guidance on the jurisdictional consequences of decisions about how to sell their products” and “forced them to contest personal jurisdiction under vague standards and to bear the burdens of costly jurisdictional discovery.” In this case, the Oregon court tied the existence of jurisdiction to the sale of an unspecified volume of products in the forum state. As the Chamber notes in its brief, “such volume-based tests conflict with the approaches taken by several other federal and state appellate courts” and “are at odds with the underlying purpose of the Due Process Clause.” At a minimum, the Chamber urged the Court to hold the petition pending its decisions in DaimerChrysler AG v. Bauman and Walden v. Fiore.