SHORT-ANSWER
QUESTIONS

Note: These questions are selected from among the “Quiz Yourself” questions in the full-length Emanuel Law Outline on Civil Procedure (ELO). We’ve kept nearly the same question numbering here as in the ELO.  Since some questions have been omitted here, there are gaps in the numbering.

Chapter 2

JURISDICTION OVER
THE PARTIES

1. D lived in Connecticut until five years ago. His company then transferred him to California to take over a troubled operation. Even though D expected to return to Connecticut eventually, he sold his Connecticut house, figuring that when he returned there he would buy a different house. D did not know for sure how long he would be residing in California, but he did not expect to remain there for more than two or three years. After D took up residence in California, he was sued in the Connecticut state courts concerning a transaction which he had carried out in New York some years before. Can the Connecticut state courts constitutionally take jurisdiction over this suit? _________________

2. D owns and runs a small bakery in Portland, Maine. P is a truck driver who lives in South Carolina. One day, P visited D’s bakery just before embarking on the long truck ride from Maine to South Carolina. He bought a dozen cream-filled doughnuts from D, and remarked, “I’m going to eat one of these every two hours, so I’ll still have a couple left by the time I get home to South Carolina.” P followed this plan, and ate the last two doughnuts while inside the South Carolina state limits. P then fell violently ill of food poisoning, causing him to lose control of his truck, so that it went off the road and flipped over, seriously injuring P. Later, medical evidence showed that it was one of the last two doughnuts, eaten in South Carolina, that caused the food poisoning. P sued D in the South Carolina courts. Not only was P a resident of South Carolina, but at the time of the suit he was hospitalized there, and all witnesses to the accident, as well as all witnesses to the medical findings concerning the food poisoning, resided in South Carolina. Assuming that the South Carolina long-arm statute can fairly be interpreted to give jurisdiction over D on these facts, may the courts of South Carolina constitutionally hear the suit? _________________