Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme Et L'Antisemitisme

Appellants La Ligue Contre Le Racisme Et L’Antisemitisme (“LICRA”) and L’Union Des Etudiants Juifs De France (“UEJF”) appeal the District Court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Appellee Yahoo! Inc. (“Yahoo!”). Appellants contend that the District Court lacked jurisdiction, that the case was not ripe, and that the District Court should have abstained from hearing the case. We hold that there was no personal jurisdiction over Appellants and reverse the District Court.

BACKGROUND

Yahoo! is an Internet service provider which has its principal place of business in Santa Clara, California. Its American website, www.yahoo.com, targets U.S. users and provides many services, including auction sites, message boards, and chat rooms, for which Yahoo! users supply much of the content. Nazi discussions have occurred in Yahool’s chat rooms and Nazi-related paraphernalia have appeared for sale on its auction website.

Section R645-2 of the French Criminal Code bans exhibition of Nazi propaganda for sale and prohibits French citizens from purchasing or possessing such material. Although a Yahoo! subsidiary, Yahoo! France, operates www.yahoo.fr in France and removes all Nazi material from…

dissenting:

Appellants La Ligue Contre Le Racisme Et L’Antisemitisme (“LICRA”) and L’Union Des Etudiants Juifs De France (“UEJF”) appeal the district court’s grant of summary judgment related to a French judgment against Appellee Yahoo! Inc. (“Yahoo!”). Appellants claim that the district court lacked jurisdiction over them, that the case was not ripe, and that the district court should have abstained from hearing the case.

The majority holds that, “for LICRA’s and UEJF’s litigation efforts against Yahoo! to amount to ‘express aiming,’ those efforts must qualify as wrongful conduct targeted at Yahoo!.” The majority, in turn, finds no wrongful conduct on LI-CRA’s and UEJF’s part based on the fact that LICRA and UEJF have not come to the United States to enforce the French court judgment.

I dissent from such position for two reasons. First, as detailed below, the case law in our circuit makes clear that, although wrongful conduct will satisfy the Supreme Court’s constitutional standard for the exercise of in personam jurisdiction, it is not necessarily required in all cases; indeed, I believe that the Supreme Court’s “express aiming” test may be met by a defendant’s intentional…