Professor Dodge Cited on Personal Jurisdiction by Federal District Court in Texas

On July 6, the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas cited Professor William S. Dodge’s article with Professor Scott Dodson, “Personal Jurisdiction and Aliens,” which was published by the Michigan Law Review in 2018. In Toyota Hybrid Brake Litigation, 2021 WL 2805455, the court found itself required to dismiss claims against Toyota Motor Corporation, despite that company’s intimate involvement with its subsidiaries, for lack of personal jurisdiction. In their article, Dodge and Dodson argued that in suits against non-U.S. citizen defendants, a court should be allowed to aggregate national contacts to establish specific jurisdiction rather than having to rely exclusively on contacts with the forum state. Although the court would have preferred to do that, it was precluded by Fifth Circuit precedent.

Professor Dodge is Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and John D. Ayer Chair in Business Law at UC Davis School of Law. He is a leading expert on international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution, who served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State from 2011 to 2012 and as a reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law from 2012 to 2018. Professor Dodge is a co-author of Transnational Business Problems and Transnational Litigation in a Nutshell, and a co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change, which won the American Society of International Law’s 2012 certificate of merit. He has authored more than 60 other publications in books and law reviews.