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Williams v. Lakeview Co.11/9/2000
or upon the unilateral activity of another person. Instead, we must focus on the relationship between the defendant, the forum, and the litigation. See Batton, 153 Ariz. at 271, 736 P.2d at 5. The nexus requirement goes to the very heart of minimum contacts and creates the distinction between specific and general jurisdiction.
Federal courts have disagreed about the strength of the causal relationship that must exist between a defendant's forum activities and a plaintiff's claim. Some courts have adopted a substantive test that requires that the defendant's contacts with the forum serve as the proximate cause of an injury , while others have adopted a "but for" test, under which a nexus exists if a plaintiff's injury would not have occurred but for a defendant's forum activities. Compare, e.g., Pizarro v. Hoteles Concorde Int'l, 907 F.2d 1256, 1260 (1st Cir. 1990) (holding a defendant's solicitation of tourist reservations in the forum state was not the proximate cause of injuries occurring in an Aruba hotel), with Shute, 897 F.2d at 386 (finding that when the plaintiff would not have taken a cruise but for defendant's solicitations in the forum state, nexus existed). Even under the more liberal "but for" test, however, the plaintiffs here cannot establish the required nexus.
Unlike the plaintiff in Shute, the plaintiffs do not assert that their visit to the casino resulted from any of Lakeview's contacts with Arizona. They did not visit the casino after seeing or in response to an advertisement, and they never traveled to Nevada on a tour bus. Their injuries did not arise out of or relate to Lakeview's employment relationship with or hotel service to Arizona residents. The failure to show any causal connection between Lakeview's Arizona activity and their claim is fatal to the plaintiffs' argument. As the court emphasized in Shute:
Under [the "but for"] . . . test, a defendant cannot be haled into court for activities unrelated to the cause of action in the absence of a showing of substantial and continuous contacts sufficient to establish general jurisdiction. The "but for" test preserves the requirement that there be some nexus between the cause of action and the defendant's activities in the forum. Shute, 897 F.2d at 385 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
Because the plaintiffs established no nexus between their cause of action and Lakeview's activities in Arizona, our courts cannot assert specific jurisdiction over Lakeview. The plaintiffs do not challenge the court of appeals' conclusion that Lakeview's contacts are not sufficient to permit Arizona to assert general jurisdiction. If we were to assert specific jurisdiction based upon those same contacts in the absence of any nexus between Lakeview's contacts with Arizona and the plaintiffs' claim, we would effectively obliterate the distinction between general and specific jurisdiction. The Due Process Clause does not permit us to do so.
Other courts have grappled with the "arising out of or related to" nexus requirement as it relates to non-resident advertising in the forum state and have reached differing conclusions. See, e.g., Shoppers Food Warehouse v. Moreno, 746 A.2d 320, 337 (D.C. 2000) (holding that because the plaintiff's claim had a discernible relationship to the defendant's extensive advertising in the forum, even when she did not claim to personally see the ads, the defendant could reasonably anticipate being haled into court there). But see, e.g., Wims v. Beach Terrace Motor Inn, Inc., 759 F. Supp. 264, 270 (E.D. Pa. 1991) (holding that the plaintiff's injury in the defendant's hotel was too attenuated from the defendant's business solicitations in the forum state to confer jur
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