On April 19, 2005, Plaintiff Ivis L. Neg-rón-Torres (“Negrón”) filed a diversity action against Verizon Communications, Inc. (“Verizon Communications”) in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico for damages arising from the death of her husband, Dr. Hugo Santana-Adorno (“Santana”). On November 30, 2005, the district court dismissed the action for lack of personal jurisdiction, and Negrón herein appeals. After careful consideration, we affirm.
*22 I.
On the afternoon of June 8, 2004, Santana suffered breathing difficulties and lost consciousness. Negron’s repeated attempts to seek urgent assistance through the Puerto Rico Telephone Company’s (“PRTC”) 9-1-1 emergency telephone number were unavailing because that telephone number was temporarily disconnected. Finally, after more than an hour had passed, a relative was able to reach a local rescue unit by alternative means. Once the rescue unit received the call, the ambulance arrived within six minutes to take Santana to the Toa Baja Medical Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Earlier on the same day, PRTC had received a call from a commercial customer disputing a charge on his telephone bill for calls to an unknown number. PRTC apparently inadvertently disconnected the 9-1-1 telephone number pursuant to its investigation of the customer’s complaint. Although the Puerto Rico 9-1-1 call center alerted PRTC to the fact that, contrary to normal practice and experience, the center was not receiving any calls, PRTC did not bring the 9-1-1 system back online for another hour-and-a-half to two hours.
In her complaint, Negron named Verizon Communications, but not PRTC, as the defendant, on the theory that Verizon Communications is the majority owner of PRTC by virtue of its controlling interest in Telecomunicaciones de Puerto Rico (“TELPRI”), the holding company of PRTC. Negron asserted that jurisdiction over Verizon Communications was proper because of the defendant’s contacts with Puerto Rico, which she alleged were as follows: 1) advertising and marketing in Puerto Rico; 2) operating in Puerto Rico as Verizon Information Services Puerto Rico, Inc., and maintaining a local telephone number there; 3) operating and advertising a wireless telephone service through a Puerto Rico affiliate known as Verizon Wireless Puerto Rico, Inc.; 4) receiving awards in Puerto Rico recognizing its achievements in promoting diversity within the workplace in Puerto Rico through its alter ego and or agent, PRTC; 5) funding grants in Puerto Rico that support a variety of educational, economic, and technological initiatives for the benefit of its customers and international affiliates through the Verizon International Foundation; 6) maintaining a five-year Management and Technology License Agreement with TELPRI, of which Verizon Communications is the 52% owner, as a result of which Verizon affiliates generated $34 million in fees for the years 2003 and 2004; 7) publishing telephone directories in Puerto Rico through its affiliates; and 8) working with PRTC to promote computer-based literacy programs and to develop a pool of qualified engineers and other technical professionals in Puerto Rico.
In granting defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, the district court relied in large part on Verizon Communications’s submission of the declaration under penalty of perjury of Jane A. Schapker, its Assistant Corporate Secretary and Executive Director for Corporate Governance (“the Schapker declaration”). The Schapker declaration asserted that: 1) Verizon Communications is incorporated in Delaware with its principal place of business in New York; 2) Verizon Communications and its subsidiaries and operating companies have separate boards of directors, keep separate books and records, and are otherwise separate; 3) Verizon Communications is a holding company that holds stock in a number of companies, but conducts no other business of any kind; 4) Verizon Communications provides no telecommunications services, it does not market or advertise, and it does not contract with consumers for telecommunications services; 5) many of the companies *23 whose stock Verizon Communications holds use the word “Verizon” in their names, but Verizon Communications does not own the trademark; 6) Verizon Communications conducts no business in Puer-to Rico, is not registered or qualified to do business in Puerto Rico, has no registered agent for service in Puerto Rico, has no office or employees in Puerto Rico, and does not maintain a Puerto Rico telephone number; 7) Verizon Communications owns 52% of TELPRI, which in turn wholly owns PRTC; and 8) PRTC is incorporated in Puerto Rico, and it maintains an independent corporate existence.
II.
We review
de novo
a “district court’s decision to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction when the court held no evidentiary hearing but instead conducted only a prima facie review of the jurisdictional facts.”
Harlow v. Children’s Hosp.,
We review the district court’s denial of permission to conduct jurisdictional discovery for abuse of discretion, and “[a] ruling will be overturned only upon a clear showing of manifest injustice, that is, where the lower court’s discovery order was plainly wrong and resulted in substantial prejudice to the aggrieved party.”
Crocker v. Hilton Int’l Barbados, Ltd.,
A. Burden of Proof
Negrón contends that the district court did not apply the proper standard of proof when it dismissed her complaint. Specifically, Negron argues that the district court employed a “strong and robust” standard when it should have conducted the relevant analysis under a “prima facie standard.”
Where a district court’s personal jurisdiction is contested, “plaintiff[s] ultimately bear[ ] the burden of persuading the court that jurisdiction exists.”
Mass. Sch. of Law,
Although the prima facie standard is the proper metric for evaluating a defendant’s motion for dismissal on the basis of personal jurisdiction, the case before us presents a twist: In order for the district court to determine whether it could properly exercise jurisdiction over Verizon Communications, it needed to determine both whether it could assert jurisdiction on the
*24
basis of the defendant’s own contacts with Puerto Rico, and whether it could assert jurisdiction over the defendant by virtue of its indirect ownership of PRTC. In accordance with a pronouncement of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, we have held that “to establish jurisdiction over the parent, a party must produce ‘strong and robust’ evidence of control by the parent company over the subsidiary, rendering the latter a ‘mere shell.’ ”
De Castro v. Sanifill, Inc.,
B. Personal Jurisdiction
Where the district court considers defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction under the prima facie standard, “it is plaintiffs burden to demonstrate the existence of every fact required to satisfy both the forum’s long-arm statute and the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.”
United States v. Swiss Am. Bank, Ltd.,
Puerto Rico’s long-arm statute allows Puerto Rico courts to exercise jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant if the action arises because that person: (1) “[tjransacted business in Puerto Rico personally or through an agent”; or (2) “participated in tortuous acts within Puerto Rico personally or through his agent.” P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 32, App. Ill, R. 4.7(a)(1);
see also Rodríguez v. Fullerton Tires Corp.,
Due process requires the plaintiff to prove the existence of either general or specific jurisdiction.
Harlow,
1. Specific Personal Jurisdiction
A court may assert specific jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant “where the cause of action arises directly out of, or relates to, the defendant’s forum-based contacts.”
United Elec., Radio & Mach. Workers of America v. 163 Pleasant St. Corp. (Pleasant Street I),
In the relatedness inquiry, “causation is central.”
Harlow,
[t]he relatedness requirement is not an open door; it is closely read, and it requires a showing of a material connection. This court steadfastly reject[s] the exercise of personal jurisdiction whenever the connection between the cause of action and the defendant’s forum-state contacts seems attenuated and indirect. ... A broad ‘but-for’ argument is generally insufficient. Because ‘but for’ events can be very remote, ... due process demands something like a ‘proximate cause’ nexus.
Id. at 61 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).
Negrón argues that the requirements of the relatedness test are met because Verizon Communications exercised its authority over PRTC “to direct or cause the direction of management and policies” of PRTC. Negrón specifically points to “a five-year Management and Technology License Agreement with TEL-PRI and [PRTC]” in which “Verizon provided TELPRI and [PRTC] with advice and direction regarding the administration and operations of telecommunication services in Puerto Rico,” including “advice on how to maintain [PRTC’s] ... 9-1-1 emergency medical assistance telephone services and operations.” Negrón concludes that her cause of action “directly arises out of Verizon’s negligence in guiding, managing, controlling, and/or supervising the policies and procedures [PRTC] implemented under Verizon’s management and instruction.”
The Schapker declaration directly contradicts Negron’s allegations by asserting that Verizon Communications is merely a holding company that “does not sell, market, or provide telecommunications services of any kind.” As evidence of defendant’s involvement in the five-year agreement, Negrón submitted to the district court a portion of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Annual Report Form 10-K for TELPRI for the year ending December 2004. The excerpt provides that, under the five-year agreement, “affiliates of Verizon provided advice and direction related to the administration and operations” of TELPRI, but it does not specify which affiliates were parties to the agreement. The defendant submits that the actual parties to the agreement are PRTC, TELPRI, and GTE International Communications, Inc. (another Verizon subsidiary), but not Verizon Communications.
The plaintiff has provided only concluso-ry allegations to demonstrate that “the defendant’s in-state conduct ... form[s] an ‘important, or [at least] material, element of proof in the plaintiffs case.”
Harlow,
2. General Personal Jurisdiction
A court has general jurisdiction when “the litigation is not directly founded on the defendant’s forum-based contacts, but the defendant has nevertheless engaged in continuous and systematic activity, unrelated to the suit, in the forum state.”
Pleasant Street I,
Plaintiffs proffered evidence to support a finding of general jurisdiction can be divided into two broad categories of contacts between Verizon Communications and Puerto Rico: 1) contacts attributed to Verizon Communications by virtue of the relationship between Verizon Communications and other Verizon affiliates like Verizon Information Services-Puerto Rico, the Verizon International Foundation, and Verizon Wireless de Puerto Rico, Inc.; and 2) contacts attributed to Verizon Communications by virtue of Verizon Communications’s ownership interest in — and control over — PRTC.
With regard to the first category of contacts, it is critical to note that Neg-ron does not differentiate between Verizon Communications and its subsidiaries who use the name ‘Verizon” in their own company names. She alleges that Verizon Communications maintains the following contacts with Puerto Rico: 1) Verizon operates in Puerto Rico as Verizon Information Services Puerto Rico, Inc., and maintains a local telephone number there; 2) Verizon operates and advertises a wireless telephone service through a Puerto Rico affiliate known as Verizon Wireless Puerto Rico, Inc.; and 3) Verizon International Foundation is a philanthropic organization that has made several grants to institutions and individuals in Puerto Rico.
The Schapker declaration confirms that many of the companies in which Verizon Communications holds stock or that it indirectly owns, use the word ‘Verizon” in their names, but asserts that Verizon Communications does not own the ‘Verizon” trademark. The district court noted that Negron’s opposition to defendant’s motion to dismiss did not “address the facts, as delineated in the Schapker declaration, that there are many, individually incorporated subsidiaries that include [the word Verizon] in their name.” Similarly, in her appeal to this court, Negron refers to defendant merely as “Verizon,” making no effort to clarify which of the various Verizon-affiliated entities is at issue. We have held that the mere use of a trademark or logo does not suffice to demonstrate the existence of the requisite minimum contacts.
See, e.g., González v. Walgreens Co.,
With the second category of contacts, Negron seeks to make a case for general jurisdiction over Verizon Communications solely on the basis of the defendant’s indirect ownership of PRTC. In other words, Negron requests that we pierce PRTC’s corporate veil to find general jurisdiction over Verizon Communications.
The principal of limited liability is one of the hallmarks of corporate law.
DeBreceni v. Graf Bros. Leasing, Inc.,
*27
It is well-established that the standard for finding general jurisdiction “is considerably more stringent than that applied to specific jurisdiction questions.”
Noonan v. Winston Co.,
[t]he mere fact that a subsidiary company does business within a state does not confer jurisdiction over its nonresident parent, even if the parent is sole owner of the subsidiary. There is a presumption of corporate separateness that must be overcome by clear evidence that the parent in fact controls the activities of the subsidiary.
Escude Cruz v. Ortho Pharm. Corp.,
In order to oppose a defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, the plaintiff must present evidence that, if credited, would support a finding of jurisdiction.
Boit,
C. Jurisdictional Discovery
Negron argues that the district court’s dismissal of her complaint was “procedurally premature” because it took place without any jurisdictional discovery and before other discovery commenced. Although the district court did not explicitly address Negron’s request for discovery in its opinion, we interpret the court to have exercised its discretion to deny jurisdictional discovery. Accordingly, our review is for abuse of discretion.
Crocker,
In this case, because Negrón has failed to make a colorable claim for personal jurisdiction, we have no reason to overturn the district court’s denial of her request for jurisdictional discovery.
III.
For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district court is affirmed. Although the plaintiffs claim did not survive the *28 jurisdictional challenge in federal court, nothing in this opinion should be read to discourage her from pursuing her claim against PRTC in state court.
Affirmed.