{"id":244,"date":"2023-12-06T16:20:20","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T20:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/?p=244"},"modified":"2023-12-06T16:20:20","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T20:20:20","slug":"pa-supreme-court-rules-on-proper-venue-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/2023\/12\/06\/pa-supreme-court-rules-on-proper-venue-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Pa. Supreme Court Rules on Proper Venue Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alan Klein<\/a> and Ethan Feldman<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In Hangey v. Husqvarna<\/em>, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruled that the percentage of a corporate defendant\u2019s total revenue generated from a forum county alone is insufficient to support the proposition that a defendant does not \u201cregularly conduct business\u201d in the county when analyzing whether a lawsuit\u2019s venue is proper. This long awaited decision provides much needed clarity for trial courts that previously wrestled with the question of how much business must a defendant have in the forum for venue to attach. The Hangey<\/em> Court concluded that proper venue lies in the forum county if \u201ca company maintains a constant physical presence in the forum county.\u201d As the Court noted, quoting prior precedents, \u201c[a] corporation may perform acts \u2018regularly\u2019 even though these acts make up a small part of its total activities.\u201d This ruling, focusing on the regularity of a defendant\u2019s business activity in the forum as opposed to the dollar amount of its business in the county, will assist litigants and trial judges in deciding venue motions under this relatively straightforward test.<\/p>\n

In dissent, Justice Brobson essentially agreed with the majority that a defendant\u2019s business revenue attributable to its activities in the forum should not be the sole determinant when a plaintiff\u2019s choice of forum is challenged, but expressed concern that the majority ruling may be interpreted that a corporate defendant\u2019s mere presence in a county is enough to establish proper venue. Justice Brobson favored a remand of the appeal to the trial court to reconsider its prior decision transferring venue in light of the guidelines in the majority opinion.<\/p>\n

Proper venue in Pennsylvania lies in any county where a corporate defendant \u201cregularly conducts business.\u201d From this, trial courts undertake a quality-quantity analysis when deciding a corporate defendant\u2019s preliminary objection to improper venue when venue is premised on a defendant doing business in the county.<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court\u2019s decision focused on the quantity prong of the analysis.\u00a0 Before the recent Hangey<\/em> decision, trial courts often reached differing results, even when examining percentages of sales data as to how much business a corporate defendant had in the forum. Relevant to the underlying circumstances in Hangey<\/em>, the only tie to the forum, Philadelphia County, was a defendant\u2019s two authorized retailers that generated a mere 0.005% of the defendant\u2019s national revenue. Notwithstanding this infinitesimal amount of business, the Supreme Court held that because the defendant \u201cregularly conducted business in Philadelphia County\u201d the forum was proper.<\/p>\n

The upshot of this decision, as noted by both the plaintiff and defense bar, is two-fold. First, Philadelphia County, a notoriously plaintiff-friendly forum, will likely attract additional cases, and, second, if a defendant regularly conducts business in the county the likelihood of a venue transfer will become considerably more difficult for defendants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alan Klein and Ethan Feldman In Hangey v. Husqvarna, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruled that the percentage of a corporate defendant\u2019s total revenue generated from a forum county alone is insufficient to support the proposition that a defendant does not \u201cregularly conduct business\u201d in the county when analyzing whether a lawsuit\u2019s venue is … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pa. Supreme Court Rules on Proper Venue Standards”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10,133,191,150,151,193,192,153,190],"ppma_author":[110],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-alan-klein","tag-ethan-feldman","tag-forum","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-supreme-court","tag-philadelphia-county","tag-trial-court","tag-venue","tag-venue-standards"],"authors":[{"term_id":110,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","author_category":"1","last_name":"Sullivan","first_name":"Margaret","job_title":"","user_url":"http:\/\/www.duanemorris.com","description":"Visit the Duane Morris website.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/productsliability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}