Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of San Francisco County

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

BMS manufactures Plavix, a prescription drug used to inhibit blood clotting. In the eight amended complaints filed in the superior court, 86 California residents and 592 residents of 33 other states sued BMS and McKesson Corporation, a pharmaceutical distributor headquartered in California, for injuries allegedly arising out of their use of Plavix.1 The state in which the largest number of plaintiffs reside is Texas, with 92 plaintiffs, followed by the 86 California plaintiffs, followed by Ohio, with 71 plaintiffs. Each amended complaint contains the same 13 causes of action: strict products liability (based on both design defect and manufacturing defect); negligence; breach of implied warranty; breach of express warranty; deceit by

A ninth case, filed in Santa Clara Superior Court by the County of Santa Clara against defendants was also joined with the other eight cases and assigned to a coordination trial judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. The complaint filed in that matter is not in the record before us nor is it a subject of dispute among the parties as to matters of personal jurisdiction.

2 concealment (Civ. Code, §§…

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS), a pharmaceutical manufacturer, conducts significant business and research activities in California but is neither incorporated nor headquartered here. In March 2012, eight separate amended complaints were filed in San Francisco Superior Court by or on behalf of 678 individuals, consisting of 86 California residents and 592 nonresidents, all of whom allegedly were prescribed and ingested Plavix, a drug created and marketed by BMS, and as a result suffered adverse consequences. BMS contests the propriety of a California court’s exercising personal jurisdiction over it for purposes of adjudicating the nonresident plaintiffs’ claims.

Under the particular circumstances present here, we conclude personal jurisdiction is authorized by Code of Civil Procedure section 410.10, which extends jurisdiction to the maximum extent permissible under the United States Constitution. Although BMS’s business contacts in California are insufficient to invoke general jurisdiction, which permits the exercise of jurisdiction over a defendant regardless of the subject of the litigation, we conclude the company’s California activities are sufficiently related to…

Dissenting.—The court holds today that 592 plaintiffs residing in states other than California may sue Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS) in a California superior court for injuries resulting from these plaintiffs’ *814 use in their own states of BMS’s prescription drug, Plavix. Because BMS is not incorporated or based in California, its activities in the state are insufficient to establish general personal jurisdiction—jurisdiction for disputes unrelated to the company’s California activities—over it in California courts. (Maj. opn., ante, at pp. 788-789.) The majority, however, finds BMS’s California contacts sufficient for specific, case-related personal jurisdiction, even though Plavix was not developed or manufactured in California and the nonresident plaintiffs did not obtain the drug through California physicians or from a California source, and despite the requirement for specific jurisdiction that there be a substantial connection between the plaintiff’s claim and the defendant’s forum activities. (Id. at pp. 799-807; see Vons Companies, Inc. v. Seabest Foods, Inc. (1996) 14 Cal.4th 434, 452 [ 58 Cal.Rptr.2d 899 , 926 P.2d 1085 ] (Vons).)

I respectfully dissent from the…