Sig Sauer Model P320 pistol
PHILADELPHIA – A Philadelphia federal judge has the chance to jumpstart a new push against a law that allows everyone in the country to use Pennsylvania’s courts to sue companies headquartered in other states.
The issue has once again popped up, this time in a large lawsuit against firearms-maker SIG Sauer. The company has been sued by customers who allege the P320 does not have adequate safety features to prevent unintended discharges.
Among the 32 plaintiffs, some of whom are joined in the case by their spouse, are police officers, combat veterans and firearms instructors. Though only two of them live in Pennsylvania and SIG Sauer’s home state is New Hampshire, Philadelphia federal judge Mark Kearney is allowing the case to proceed in Pennsylvania.
It’s possibly the next chapter in the fight against the state’s “consent-by-registration” law, which essentially requires a company that wishes to sell its products in Pennsylvania to be willing to face lawsuits there – even from out-of-state plaintiffs.
“(T)he statute opens Pennsylvania’s courtroom doors to legions of out-of-state plaintiffs with out-of-state injuries who seek relief in the plaintiff-friendly confines of the Commonwealth’s busiest courts,” groups wrote to Kearney April 3.
“Litigants nationwide need clarity on the statute, and Defendant SIG Sauer’s pending motion for reconsideration is the ideal vehicle to provide it.”
SIG Sauer argued earlier this month that Kearney should revisit his decision or certify it so that it can be reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Groups like Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform, the state Chamber of Business and Industry and the American Tort Reform Association agree.
A challenge to the consent-by-registration law has already made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found it did not violate defendants’ due process rights. Justice Samuel Alito, though, said there is more to sort out, but the facts of the case known as Mallory did not allow it.
Companies are now claiming it violates the Dormant Commerce Clause, which limits how states can regulate commerce. It’s an argument Syngenta tried to take to the U.S. Supreme Court as it faces more than 1,000 cases in Philadelphia alleging the herbicide Paraquat causes Parkinson’s disease.
But plaintiffs lawyers noted the effort was premature. The Philadelphia judge had simply rejected the argument at an early stage, and there is no final decision to be appealed since the state Superior Court and Supreme Court never reviewed the case.
Allowing the Third Circuit to hear the SIG Sauer case would be different. SIG Sauer says the law places substantial burdens on interstate commerce and quoted Justice Alito, who wrote in Mallory that he is “hard-pressed to identify any legitimate local interest that is advanced” by it.
Kearney pointed at the two Pennsylvanians when rejecting SIG Sauer’s arguments for dismissal, finding they were in a “convenient forum.” SIG Sauer says those two can’t hold up the claims of everyone else.
“Even if Plaintiffs might defend the registration statute against a Commerce Clause challenge in connection with plaintiffs who are residents of Pennsylvania or whose alleged injuries occurred in Pennsylvania, that does not address SIG Sauer’s broader challenge, which includes the claims of plaintiffs from across the country, which have no connection to Pennsylvania and for which the concerns expressed by Justice Alito apply directly,” the company wrote.
Mallory was a complicated 5-4 ruling described as actually a 4-1-4 vote. It helped lawyers use a Philadelphia court that has issued blockbuster verdicts in the past and features a Complex Litigation Center to group claims filed by people around the country over products like talcum powder, Paraquat and Zantac.
It also invited the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to address other arguments against the consent-by-registration statute, but the court declined to do so. The groups supporting SIG Sauer’s case said that created a “jurisdictional void, leaving countless stakeholders in the lurch.”
“The only clarity to be drawn from Mallory comes in the form of its bleak and all-but-inevitable consequences, including (1) protracted litigation, conflicting trial-court decisions, and appellate headaches regarding the Statute’s constitutionality, (2) plaintiffs’ capitalization (as here) on Mallory’s departure from settled principles of corporate personal jurisdiction to leverage the constitutionally ambiguous Statute as a license for forum shopping and (3) enactment of copycat consent-by-registration laws by other states emboldened by the Mallory plurality’s approval of the Statute,” they added.
States like Georgia, Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota have similar laws, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker last year signed one over calls from concerned groups to veto it.
