On October 18, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.) decided Sae Han Sheet Co. v. Eastman Chemical Corp., the latest in a series of cases to examine whether an out-of-state corporation may be deemed to have consented to the jurisdiction of New York courts by virtue of its registration to do business within the state. The Sae Han court followed the lead of several recent S.D.N.Y. cases which have held that this “consent-by-registration” theory is no longer a valid basis for general jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman.In one of several attempts to circumvent the restrictions on general personal jurisdiction imposed by Daimler, the plaintiff in Sae Han invoked another Supreme Court decision – Burnham v Superior Court of California. In Burnham, the Supreme Court found that a California trial court had properly exercised personal jurisdiction over an individual who was served with process while visiting the state for reasons unrelated to the suit. The Supreme Court reasoned that the typical jurisdictional analysis applied to out-of-state defendants (which would later be further developed in Daimler) did not apply where a defendant was served while physically present in a state, even if such presence was only temporary.

In Sae Han, the plaintiff argued that the question of consent-by-registration is more properly analyzed according to the standards established in Burnham, and that Daimlerdoes not apply. The S.D.N.Y. dismissed this argument in summary fashion, with little analysis. Nevertheless, the Sae Han case raises the interesting question of whether a corporation which has registered to do business within a state – and has appointed an in-state agent to receive service of process on its behalf – should be treated more like the defendant in Burnhamthan the defendant in Daimler. New York courts may yet have additional opportunities to address this question – particularly as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to issue any definitive ruling on this point.