| Pennoyer v. Neff | ||||||
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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 | |||||
| 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 | ||||||
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Overruled by
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| Shaffer v. Heitner (1977) | ||||||
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 party if that party is served with process while physically present within the state.
Contents |
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. 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 in the state of Oregon for outstanding debts related to his legal services but because Neff was not to be found there 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 and consequently Mitchell, possibly waiting for the arrival of the grant, waited until July 1866 to levy execution on the property at which time the court ordered the land seized and sold in order to pay the judgment. Mitchell arranged for the sheriff to seize the land, purchased it at public auction, and subsequently assigned it to Sylvester Pennoyer causing Neff to sue Pennoyer in 1874 in federal court to recover his land. After Neff won, Pennoyer appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
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. The Supreme Court found for Neff; holding that in order for the trial court to have jurisdiction over the property, the property needed to be attached before the start of litigation, which then has quasi in rem jurisdiction. Constructive notice as opposed to actual notice is insufficient under American law to inform a person living in another state except for cases affecting the personal status of an American plaintiff (like divorce) or cases that are in rem where the property sought is within the boundaries of the state and the law presumes that property is always in the possession of the owner, and the owner therefore knows what happens to his property and therefore attachment of the property before judicial proceedings makes constructive notice sufficient.
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. And indeed, it seems the basis of a state's authority to decide the "status" of its citizens, for example, as in a divorce without having personal jurisdiction over the respondent remains undisturbed. 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. The doctrines governing personal jurisdiction in the United States have spawned a great deal of discourse within the Supreme Court of the United States with many cases fine-tuning and elaborating upon the concept which has led to the test that we have today in which 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, but nevertheless in every case the United States Supreme Court has ruled that as a minimum such analyses must comport with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In the United States, Pennoyer v. Neff is considered legendary amongst law students and is viewed as the first true introduction to how strikingly convoluted 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 principle of personal jurisdiction. Other law professors place far less emphasis on Pennoyer, preferring to focus on more modern, on point cases.