Pennoyer v. Neff
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| Pennoyer v. Neff | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued October, 1877 Decided May 13, 1878 |
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| Full case name | Sylvester Pennoyer v. Marcus Neff | |||||
| Citations | 95 U.S. 714 (more) | |||||
| Prior history | Error to the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Oregon | |||||
| Holding | ||||||
| No personal jurisdiction can be had over defendants who are physically absent from the state or have not consented to the court's jurisdiction. | ||||||
| Court membership | ||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||
| Majority | Field | |||||
| Dissent | Hunt | |||||
| Laws applied | ||||||
| U.S. Const. Amend. XIV | ||||||
Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714 (1878),[1] was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held that a court can exert personal jurisdiction over a defendant if the defendant is served with process while physically present within the state.
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[edit] Factual and procedural background
Marcus Neff hired an attorney, John H. Mitchell, to help him with paperwork and other legal matters incidental to his efforts to obtain a land grant under the Donation Law of Oregon, an act of the United States Congress enacted on September 27, 1850 (expired December 1, 1855) which provided an incentive for the development of land in the territories of the American West by conveying parcels of land to be used for further development. Neff was ultimately successful in procuring property on the ancestral homeland of the Multnomah Indian tribe in Multnomah County, Oregon.[citation needed] The property had an estimated value of U.S. $15,000 at the time.
Mitchell later sued Neff in the Circuit Court of Multnomah County, Oregon for outstanding debts related to his legal services; Neff was not to be found there, and Mitchell won the lawsuit by default judgment which was entered in Mitchell's favor after Neff failed to appear in court. When Mitchell won the lawsuit in February 1866, Neff's land grant hadn't yet been conferred. Mitchell, possibly waiting for the arrival of the grant, waited until July 1866 to get a writ of attachment on the property. The court later ordered the land seized and sold in order to pay the judgment. Mitchell bought the land at that very auction and transferred the title to Sylvester Pennoyer. In 1874, Neff sued Pennoyer in federal court to recover his land. Neff won, and Pennoyer appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
[edit] Issue
The Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a State court could order property owned by an out-of-state resident to be seized and sold when the out-of-state resident was not served actual notice.
[edit] Result
The Supreme Court found for Neff. In order for the trial court to have jurisdiction over the property, the property needed to be attached before entry of the judgment. It then has quasi in rem jurisdiction. Constructive notice, as opposed to actual notice, is insufficient to inform a person living in another state, except for cases affecting the personal status of the plaintiff (like divorce) or cases that are in rem where the property sought is within the boundaries of the state. The law assumes that property is always in the possession of the owner, and the owner therefore knows what happens to his property; therefore, attachment of the property before judicial proceedings makes constructive notice sufficient.
[edit] Subsequent history
Many aspects of the Court's ruling in this case have subsequently been overturned where personal or in personam jurisdiction is concerned. In a long series of United States Supreme Court jurisprudence following this ruling, the Court has modified the territorial analysis without overruling its holding. The United States Supreme Court has since ruled that all determinations of state-court personal jurisdiction must be evaluated in light of and via application of the doctrine of "minimum contacts". The "minimum contacts test" is now used almost exclusively in accordance with these decisions and has also been held to apply to jurisdictional analysis in federal court settings as well as state courts.
[edit] Later developments in the doctrine
The doctrines governing personal jurisdiction in the United States have spawned a great deal of discourse within the Supreme Court, with many cases fine-tuning and elaborating upon the concept. The overall scope of the test for determining whether a court may exert personal jurisdiction over a party has been expanded in certain respects and narrowed in others. In every case, the Court has ruled that as a minimum such analyses must comport with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
[edit] Place in law schools
In the United States, Pennoyer v. Neff is considered something of a milestone amongst law students and is viewed as the first true introduction to how strikingly complex legal issues can be. [1] At some law schools, it is the first case new students read in civil procedure class because of the powerful lesson on the nature of the American federal system, and the professor may spend two or three weeks quizzing and challenging students on various aspects of the case, a traditional initiation into the Socratic method. Other law professors place far less emphasis on Pennoyer, preferring to focus on more modern, on point cases.
[edit] Further reading
- Borchers, Patrick J. The Death of the Constitutional Law of Personal Jurisdiction: From Pennoyer to Burnham and Back Again 24 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 19 (1990)
- Perdue, Wendy Collins Sin, Scandal, and Substantive Due Process: Personal Jurisdiction and Pennoyer Reconsidered, 62 Wash. Law Rev. 479 (1987)
- Tocklin, Adrian Pennoyer v. Neff: The Hidden Agenda of Stephen J. Field 28 Seton Hall Law Rev. 75 (1997)
- Friedenthal, Jack H. Civil Procedure Cases and Materials Ninth Edition (2005) pp 69–73
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Leeson, Fred. Rose City Justice: A Legal History of Portland, Oregon. Oregon Historical Society Press. 1998. pp 47-48
[edit] External links
- Official Website of the Supreme Court of the United States
- ^ Text of Pennoyer v. Neff , 95 U.S. 714 (1887) is available from: · Enfacto · Findlaw · Justia
