The opinion of the court was delivered by
Thе trial court concluded that third-party defendant The Law Offices of Courtney Wilder Stanton, a Florida law firm, was subject to jurisdiction in New Jersey as a result of its representa
Dana Transport, Inc. (Dana) is in the business of providing trucking and cargo transportation services. Its principal place of business is located in Avenel, New Jersey, but it also has a terminal located in Jacksonville, Florida. Dana was insured by Reliance National Insurance Comрany (Reliance), an entity that is now in liquidation.
In February 1997 Dana shipped a tank trailer from Augusta, Georgia to its Jacksonville terminal. It then placed the tank trailer, filled with nitric acid, aboard a barge owned and operated by Crowley American Transport for shipment to San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the voyage to Puerto Rico, nitric acid leaked from Dana’s tank trailer, damaging Crowley’s barge.
Dana paid Crowley apprоximately $195,000 for the damage to its barge. Reliance, after subtracting Dana’s deductible, reimbursed Dana and then sought to file a subrogation action against Universal Petroleum Services, a company which had inspected the tank trailer prior to its placement on Crowley’s barge.
Courtney Wilder Stanton is the principal of The Law Offices of Courtney Wilder Stanton. He is a Florida resident and is admitted to the practice of lаw in Florida and in Georgia. He has been certified as a specialist in admiralty and maritime law. His law office is located in Jacksonville, the same city in which Dana maintains its Florida terminal. In mid-1998 Stanton was contacted by Crawford and Company, a national insurance adjusting firm, which inquired whether his firm would be interested in handling a subrogation action on behalf of Reliance and Dana against Universal. After determining that neither he nor his firm had a disqualifying conflict of interest, Stanton agreed to undertake the matter. He was told to await further instructions.
Crawford’s files listed the manager at Dana’s Jacksonville terminal as the contact person, but Stanton’s initial calls to Dana’s Jacksonville terminal were unsuccessful in obtaining any informatiоn. Stanton said that he finally received a telephone call from Ron Dana who told him to stop contacting the Florida terminal and deal only with Ron Billik, Dana’s general manager, who was located in New Jersey. According to Stanton, Dana failed to cooperate with him, to the point of not answering his telephone calls or letters. Eventually, based on that lack of cooperation, Stanton sought and obtаined permission from the Florida court to withdraw as Dana’s attorney. Thereafter, Universal successfully filed a motion to dismiss the subrogation suit.
In June 2003 Reliance began suit in New Jersey against Dana, contending that its conduct in connection with the Florida suit was a breach of its contractual duty to cooperate. Dana, in turn, filed a third-party action against Stanton, alleging negligence on its part in connection with its representаtion of Dana in the subrogation action; it also asserted claims for contribution and indemnification. Stanton did not file an answer to this third-party complaint; rather, it filed a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. R. 4:6 — 2(b).
Accompanying this motion was Stanton’s affidavit in which he set forth that he has never been licensed to practice law in New Jersey, nor has any attorney he has ever employed. Indeed, he
The trial court denied Stanton’s motion. It concluded that New Jersey had a sufficient interest in the litigation and that the contacts Stanton had with Dana’s New Jersey site in an effort to obtain information relative to the Florida litigation made it not unreasonable for New Jersey to exercise jurisdiction over Stanton.
I
New Jersey’s only limitation upon the exercise of long-arm jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant is that it be “consistent with due process of law.” R. 4:4-4(b)(1).
Due process requires only that in order to subject a defendant to a judgment in personam, if he be not present within the territory of the forum, he have certain minimum contacts with it such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”
[Lebel v. Everglades Marina, Inc., 115 N.J. 317, 322,558 A.2d 1252 (1989) (quoting Int'l. Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 158, 90 L.Ed. 95, 102 (1945)).]
New Jersey exercises such jurisdiction to the outermost limit of its ability to do so. Avdel Corp. v. Mecure, 58 N.J. 264, 268,
Lebel, supra, illustrates this principle. Plaintiff, a New Jersey resident, purchased a 38-foot Cigarette racing boat from defendant, a Florida dealer. 115 N.J. at 320,
A
Determining whether a non-resident defendant is subject to our jurisdiction requires a two-pronged analysis: first, an examination of the nature of the contacts defendant has had with New Jersey and then a cоnsideration whether the exercise of jurisdiction comports with “fair play and substantial justice,” i.e., is it reasonable in the overall context of the matter. Lebel, supra, 115 N.J. at 328,
The analysis and determination whether a defendant’s contacts with New Jersey are sufficient to support in personam jurisdiction depends upon
whethеr general or specific jurisdiction is asserted, that is, whether the defendant is subject to any claim that may be brought against him in the forum state whether or not related to or arising out of the contacts themselves, i.e., general jurisdiction, or whether the claim is related to or arises out of the contacts in the forum, i.e., specific jurisdiction. Clearly, a lesser standard is required to sustain the exercise of specific jurisdiction____
[Citibank, N.A v. Estate of Simpson, 290 N.J.Super. 519, 526-27,676 A.2d 172 (App.Div.1996).]
The Court in Lebel summarized the principles underlying a determination whether a non-resident defendant is subject to specific personal jurisdiction.
In the context of specific jurisdiction, the minimum contacts inquiry must focus on the relationship among the defendant, the forum and the litigation. The “minimum contacts” requirement is satisfied so long as the contacts resulted from the defendant’s purposeful conduct and not the unilateral activities of the plaintiff.
This “purposeful availment” requirement ensures that a defendant will not be haled into a jurisdiction solely as a result of “random,” “fortuitous,” or “attenuated” contacts. The question is whether the defendant’s conduct and connection with the forum State are such that he should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there.
[Id. at 323-24,558 A.2d 1252 . (citations omitted).]
Cоnsidering whether a defendant has had sufficient contacts with the forum state requires a fact-sensitive analysis. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 485-86, 105 S.Ct. 2174, 2189,
This court has addressed the question twice in reported opinions, Citibank v. Simpson, supra, and Washington v. Magazzu, 216 N.J.Super. 23,
In Washington, supra, the plaintiffs sued defendant Mаgazzu, a New Jersey attorney, and John Wicker, a Virginia attorney, for legal malpractice in connection with a medical malpractice action the plaintiffs wished to pursue in Virginia relating to the death of their daughter in a Virginia hospital. 216 N.J.Super. at 25,
The federal courts have also had occasion to consider the question. In Carteret Savings, supra, the court found personal jurisdiction in New Jersey over Louisiаna attorneys who had acted as local counsel for the bank in connection with a Louisiana real estate transaction.
In Wartsila, supra, the plaintiff sued defendant Hill in New Jersey for damages when an individual Hill had assigned as a senior consultant on a construction project in El Salvador had falsified his credentials and later committed perjury in the course of an arbitration рroceeding between Wartsila and a subcontractor.
In the course of its opinion, the court noted that the two individual attorneys had had substantial involvement in the litigation, even to the extent of seeking admission in New Jersey pro hac vice, to appear on plaintiffs behalf. Id. at 554, 557. In addition, the firm had represented a number of clients doing business in New Jersey; its attorneys had conducted depositions in New Jersey and met in New Jersey with their clients. 269
We consider this matter closely analogous to Sawtelle v. Farrell,
illogical to conclude that those isolated recommendations constituted the negligent conduct that caused the Florida injury and thus were in-forum acts sufficient to establish specific personal jurisdiction____
[70 F.3d at 1390 .]
The court was also satisfied that defendants’ agreement to represent the plaintiffs, knowing they were New Hampshire residents, could not be considered a purposeful availment of doing business in New Hampshire. Id. at 1391-94. According to the court, “[t]he mere existence of an attorney-client relationship, unaccompanied by other sufficient contacts with the forum, does
Other courts have reached a similar conclusion. Pyle v. Hatley,
We are satisfied that the record here does not disclose such purposeful activity on the part of Stanton that the firm should reasonably have anticipated being sued in New Jersey. Stanton, a Florida firm, was retained to prosecute a subrogation action in the State of Florida for losses incurred following a shipment by an entity doing business in Florida from a Florida terminal. According to the record before us, Stanton was not even aware that Dana had a New Jersey location until after it had agreed to handle the Florida subrogation action. Stanton did not affirmatively reach out to Dana in New Jersey; rather, it was Dana who instructed Stanton not to deal with its employees at its Florida terminal, but only with its New Jersey personnel.
We cannot equate Stanton’s compliance with that directive to constitute “purposeful availment” of the benefits and protections
B
Ordinarily, a conclusion that Stanton lacked sufficient minimum contacts with New Jersey to be subject to the jurisdiction of our courts would conclude the matter. For purposes of completeness, however, we turn to the second prong of the analysis, whether it would “offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice” to subject Stanton to the jurisdiction of our courts. It was this second prong which led to the dismissal of plaintiffs’ claim against their Virginia attorney in Washington, supra. A party who seeks to defeat fоrum jurisdiction in the light of having purposefully directed activities at forum residents “must present a compelling case that the presence of some other considerations would render jurisdiction unreasonable.” Burger King, supra, 471 U.S. at 477, 105 S.Ct. at 2185, 85 L. Ed.2d at 544.
The factors to be considered include:
The burden on the defendant, the forum State’s interest in adjudicating the dispute, the plaintiffs interest in obtaining convenient and effective relief, the interstate judicial system’s interest in obtaining the most efficient resolution of cоntroversies, and the shared interest of the several States in furthering fundamental substantive social policies.
*551 [Id., 471 U.S. at 477, 105 S.Ct. at 2184, 85 L. Ed.2d at 543.]
An examination of these factors leads us to conclude that it would be unreasonable to require Stanton to submit to jurisdiction in New Jersey. We note first that the physical distance separating Stanton from New Jersey does not, by itself, warrant a conclusion of undue burden. Lebel, supra, 115 N.J. at 329,
The remaining factors, however, all combine to lead to the conclusion that New Jersey does not have personal jurisdiction over Stanton in the context of this dispute. New Jersey has no interest in adjudicating whether a Florida law firm was negligent in the manner in which it handled a Florida lawsuit. While Dana concededly has an interest in “convenient and effective relief,” that interest may as readily be achieved in Florida, where Dana maintains a terminal and actively conducts business, as in New Jersey. Dana, having decided to conduct business in Florida, is fully able to vindicate its interests by litigating its disputes in that forum. Florida, in contrast, has a particular interest in adjudicating whether a Florida law firm was negligent in connection with litigation that firm conducted in Florida’s courts. Washington v. Magazzu, supra, 216 N.J.Super. at 29,
Finally, we reject Dana’s remaining contention, that rather than reversing the trial court order, we remand the matter to the trial court for discovery and an evidentiary hearing. While such a remedy may be appropriate in the faсe of conflicting factual assertions, Citibank, supra, the parties here only dispute the legal significance of the facts, not the facts themselves.
For the reasons stated, we reverse the trial court’s order and remand this matter to the trial court for entry of an order
Notes
See Comment, Summer Bennett Joseph, Drowning Professionals in the Stream of Commerce: An Examination of Purposeful Availment in the Professional Liability Context, 53 Emory L.J. 277, 295 (2004), noting that purposeful availment “requires something more” in professional liability actions than in product liability actions.