DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman (Fall 2013)

Posted by bradlemn on Monday, September 16, 2013 in Roundtables.

DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman was argued at the Supreme Court in the October 2013 term. In Bauman, the Court considered whether a U.S. District Court may exercise general personal jurisdiction over DaimlerChrysler AG, a foreign company, based on the alleged acts of its Argentine subsidiary. None of the alleged actions occurred in California, but Respondents argued that the the contacts of DaimlerChrysler’s California subsidiary should be imputed to the parent company and thus that California may exercise general jurisdiction.

The authors had much material to work with on this issue, and how the Court would frame the case and answer its important questions was far from clear. The last time the Court took up issues of general jurisdiction was in Goodyear Dunlop Tires, S.A. v. Brown, but the Court left open many questions pertaining to general jurisdiction that it might take the opportunity to clarify in Bauman. There was also potential that the Court might speak to the scope of the Alien Tort Statute in the wake of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.

Professors Donald Childress, Howard Erichson, Burt Neuborne, Suzanna Sherry, and Linda Silberman have each considered the precedents and offered their views on how the Court might—or should—approach this case in their “First Impression” essays below.

Then, the authors responded to one another’s arguments in the “Responses” phase of the Roundtable. We hope you find this Roundtable to be both informative and engaging.