The First District examines a slew of important substantive and procedural litigation issues in Graver v. Pinecrest Volunteer Fire Dept., 2014 IL App (1st) 123006, a commercial lease dispute pitting an Illinois corporation against a Tennessee corporation and an agent of that corporation.
The parties signed a fire truck lease that called for seven years’ worth of monthly payments.
The lease was signed by defendant’s former treasurer who said he had authority to sign on defendant’s behalf. Plaintiff sued after the defendant defaulted and won an Illinois default judgment against both the corporate and individual defendants of over $92,000.
About fifteen months later, the corporate defendant moved to vacate the judgment under Code Section 2-1401 (for judgments more than 30 days but less than 2 years old). It claimed the Illinois court lacked personal jurisdiction over it. The trial court denied the motion and found that defendant was subject to Illinois long-arm jurisdiction.
The First District reversed.
Holding that the trial court lacked jurisdiction over the Tennessee defendant, the court catalogued the key Illinois jurisdictional rules for foreign defendants:
– the plaintiff has the burden of establishing jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant;
– Code Section 2-209(c) (Illinois’ long-arm statute) provides that an Illinois court can exercise jurisdiction over a foreign defendant if permitted by the Illinois Constitution and the U.S. Constitution;
– Federal due process requires a foreign defendant to have “minimum contacts” with the forum state and to have “purposely availed” itself of the privileges of conducting activities in the forum state;
– Federal due process involves three factors: (1) whether the defendant had minimum contacts such that it had “fair warning” it may be haled into the forum state’s court; (2) the claim against the foreign defendant arose from or is related to the defendant’s contacts with the forum state; and (3) whether it’s reasonable to require the foreign defendant to litigate in another state;
– For Illinois to have general jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant, the defendant must have “continuous and systematic” business contacts with the forum state;
– Where specific jurisdiction applies, the foreign defendant can only be sued if the action arises from or is related to the defendant’s conduct in the forum state;
– In a breach of contract suit against an out-of-state defendant, the critical jurisdictional factors are (1) who initiated the transaction; (2) where the contract was formed; and (3) where the contract was performed;
– A choice-of-law contractual provision is relevant, but is not by itself a sufficient basis to subject a defendant to jurisdiction in another state.
(¶¶ 13-17).
Applying these rules, the First District found that Illinois lacked jurisdiction over the Tenn. defendant. First, there was no general jurisdiction since the corporation’s contacts with Illinois were sparse: they weren’t continuous and systematic. Also, the agent who signed the lease lacked authority to bind the defendant. It offered an uncontested affidavit that established the agent was never authorized to sign contracts for the defendant. The court also found that since defendant didn’t know about the lease until after the default judgment was entered, there was no ratification of the agent’s signing the lease. ¶¶ 19-20.
The Court reversed the trial court’s jurisdiction ruling and voided the judgment against the defendant.
Take-aways: For an out-of-state corporation to be subject to Illinois specific jurisdiction, its contacts with Illinois must form the basis for the lawsuit. In addition, where a plaintiff is trying to impute an agent’s actions to a corporate principal, the plaintiff must show that the principal said or did something to create in the plaintiff the reasonable belief that the agent could bind the principal. My question is why didn’t the plaintiff file a counter-affidavit which detailed the actions of the agent and principal which led the plaintiff to assume the agent had authority to bind the principal? It’s not clear whether it would have made a difference; but a counter-affidavit would have at least given the plaintiff a fighting chance.
