Mucha v. Wagner, Supreme Court of North Carolina, August 13, 2021 (DVPO, personal jurisdiction over defendant)

Plaintiff and defendant were in a romantic relationship while plaintiff was in college in South Carolina and defendant lived in Connecticut. The relationship ended while plaintiff was still in South Carolina. Upon ending the relationship, plaintiff told defendant not to contact her again. Plaintiff then moved to North Carolina at the end of her college semester. On the day she moved, defendant attempted to contact plaintiff 28 times. Upon hearing a voice mail message, plaintiff suffered a panic attack. The next day, plaintiff filed a 50B action in North Carolina.

Defendant’s attorney appeared at the 50B hearing solely to contest personal jurisdiction. His attorney argued that defendant had not affirmatively directed any calls to North Carolina, that he had not purposefully availed himself of any protections of the state, and that he had no way of knowing that plaintiff was in North Carolina at the time he called her. The trial court denied the motion to dismiss and, at the conclusion of the hearing, entered a DVPO against defendant. Defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals.

To the Court of Appeals, defendant argued that he did not have sufficient minimum contacts to subject him to personal jurisdiction in North Carolina. The Court of Appeals disagreed with him and affirmed the trial court’s order. The Court of Appeals focused on the foreseeability component of the due process analysis and determined that defendant knew that plaintiff was not from South Carolina, that defendant knew the college semester had ended, and knew that Plaintiff regularly visited family outside of South Carolina. Therefore, it was not reasonable for defendant to assume that plaintiff could only be in South Carolina when he called. Those 28 calls established sufficient minimum contacts with North Carolina to support the exercise of personal jurisdiction.

The Court of Appeals did note that this was a “close case” and was limited to the facts here where defendant knew enough of plaintiff’s circumstances to know she might not be in South Carolina when he called her. Defendant then petitioned the North Carolina Supreme Court for discretionary review of the Court of Appeals’ decision and also noticed an appeal as of right of a substantial constitutional question.

The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals decision and vacated the trial court’s order. In reaching this decision, the Supreme Court noted that the only reason defendant’s calls brought him into contact with North Carolina is that, hours before he made the calls, plaintiff moved here and, as such, his contacts with North Carolina were “random, isolated, or fortuitous” events. In reaching its decision, the Supreme Court relied upon two principles: (1) conduct directed at a person is not necessarily the same as conduct directed at a forum state and (2) a defendant’s knowledge that plaintiff could be somewhere other than the place where plaintiff ordinarily resides is not enough to establish personal jurisdiction wherever plaintiff happens to be.

October 29, 2021/by FamilyLaw