If you want to sue someone, you have to do it in a court that has "personal jurisdiction" over that person; that, courts have held, is required by the Due Process Clause. One way to make sure of this is to sue where the defendant lives (to oversimplify in some measure). But you can also sue in jurisdictions with which the defendant has "case-related contacts," for instance where the underlying tort has been committed.
In libel cases, where speech from one state often causes harm in another, the matter gets extra complicated. Here's an illustration from Johnson v. Griffin, decided Tuesday by the Sixth Circuit, in an opinion by Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, joined by Judges Guy Cole and Amul Thapar:
Kathy Griffin, a California-based celebrity and social activist, sent a series of tweets to her two million Twitter followers asserting that Tennessean Samuel Johnson, the CEO of Tennessee-based VisuWell, had engaged in homophobic conduct. She encouraged her followers to make him "online famous" and tagged his company. She then asked his employer to "remove[]" him from the Board of Directors and threatened that the "nation w[ould] remain vigilant" if it did not. Within a day of her first tweets, the company fired Johnson and removed him from the Board.
Johnson and his wife sued Griffin in federal court in Tennessee, claiming (among other things) that she tortiously interfered with his employment. Griffin argued that her tweets did not subject her to the State's personal jurisdiction, and the district court dismissed the case. We disagree and reverse….
Two cases "bookend" [the] application of personal jurisdiction to intentional torts. The first, Calder v. Jones, establishes that the effects of intentional torts sometimes may establish personal jurisdiction. In that case, a California actress sued Florida journalists in California for publishing a libelous article. The Supreme Court permitted the California court to exercise personal jurisdiction over the journalists, observing that they had engaged in intentional conduct "expressly aimed at California," not "untargeted negligence." They consulted "California sources" for the article whose "focal point" concerned California. And they knew that the actress would experience the brunt of the injury in California, where the magazine had its largest circulation and where she lived and worked.
