Poulsen Roser A/S v. Jackson & Perkins Wholesale, Inc., No. 10 C 1894, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Nov. 15, 2010) (St. Eve, J.).
Judge St. Eve denied plaintiff Pousen Rosen’s ("Poulsen") Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e) and 60(b) motion for reconsideration of the Court’s decision dismissing the case as to the individual defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction in this Lanham Act case.
First, "new evidence" in the form of the District of South Carolina Bankruptcy Court’s order consolidating the corporate defendants was irrelevant and did not alter the Court’s analysis. The Bankruptcy Court made no finding regarding the relationship between the corporate and individual defendants.
Second, the Court reconsidered and upheld its analysis regarding the corporate defendants’ internet contacts. The Seventh Circuit rejected the Zippo case’s sliding scale for internet-based jurisdiction because of the possibility of creating universal jurisdiction:
We note the legitimate concern that "[p]remising personal jurisdiction on the maintenance of a website, without requiring some level of "interactivity" between the defendant and consumers in the forum state, would create almost universal jurisdiction because of the virtually unlimited accessibility of websites across the country." Jennings, 383 F.3d at 550. Courts should be careful in resolving questions about personal jurisdiction involving on-line contacts to ensure that a defendant is not haled into court simply because the defendant owns or operates a website that is accessible in the forum state, even if that site is "interactive."
Illinois v. Hemi Group LLC,
__ F.3d __, 2010 WL 3547647, at *6 (7th Cir. 2010).