Plaintiff Spanganberg had to emergency land his small plane on a business trip in Arizona.  No one was injured but the plane was badly damaged and the engine destroyed. Plaintiff and his company sued multiple defendants alleging breach of warranty and product liability theories among others. Among the many defendants was Continental Motors Inc. [Continental], a Delaware Corporation and Textron Aviation, Inc. [Textron] a Kansas corporation both principally located and doing business outside Arizona. The United States District Court for the State of Arizona dismissed the claims against Continental and Textron for lack of jurisdiction. It also denied a request for jurisdictional discovery.  Plaintiffs appealed and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed.

 

Plaintiffs conceded that there was no general jurisdiction over these defendants so it came down to specific jurisdiction. To establish specific jurisdiction you must show:

 

The maintenance of a website that can be accessed in any state that advertises a product where there is no evidence of a specific marketing strategy for the state where jurisdiction is sought is insufficient to establish jurisdiction. The distribution of nationwide service bulletins and identifying third party repair shops within Arizona on a website is not sufficient. Further even if the repair shops were operated by Continental, the plaintiffs failed to establish their damages were caused by that “purposeful activity.” Similarly, while Textron did indeed maintain a single repair shop in Arizona plaintiffs failed to demonstrate damages caused by that repair shop.

 

Finally where plaintiffs request to be allowed to do jurisdictional discovery was not supported by affidavit or evidence establishing how such discovery might be helpful the court it is properly denied. Here the court  concluded the request was supported by nothing more than a “hunch” that facts might be found to support specific jurisdiction and therefore was properly denied.