Website Personal Jurisdiction

Part 1

When I completed Mr. Wolf’s article I thought about what site to critique, I decided on one that I know the owners of, that site was HarveyVogel.com. It is a manufacturing company that specializes in high-quality metal stampings. It is quite apparent that the site is definitely an interactive site because they have links to their engineers that can help the potential customer “understand how metal stamping can work for your parts....and save you money.” The site also includes links to email the sales department; if we look at the number of hits that the site has received it are over 10,000. This indicates that the site has been accessed by several and mostlikely those that are outside of the state of Minnesota which means that minimum contact could be established as well as Personal Jurisdiction. This company does business worldwide and could therefore fall under jurisdiction in foreign courts as well.

Part 2

With the variances of law from forum to forum websites should be concerned with Personal Jurisdiction. It is a concern because the plaintiff that brings a case to their forum could easily not be in the website owner’s forum and will then subject the website owner (defendant) to the laws of the plaintiff’s. These are considerations that the owner must accept and as a result possibly make decisions that are in the best interest of the owner’s company. These decisions could include: choosing not to do business in certain locales, curbing the way they do advertising and marketing, limiting the amount of two-way communications within certain locales that do not accept the owner’s business.

In order for a court to obtain personal jurisdiction there are specific elements that must be present. Those elements are: meeting of minimum contact requirements, due process and must not violate fair play and substantial justice requirements. With that in mind, you look to the website and decide based on the “interactive-passive” test which will determine what the site is. To be considered interactive the site must be using two-way online communication that fosters an online business relationship, the ability to make transactions via the internet, information can be exchanged for the purpose of soliciting business and on the whole a more commercial based site. For the site to be considered passive it must not do any of the things that make an interactive site and be solely based on giving its readers and users information. In determining which a site is the amount of interactivity between states must be determined to decide if the site meets the minimum contact requirements. Then are