Summary
noting that a defendant may require plaintiffs to show personal jurisdiction by a preponderance of the evidence at trial
Summary of this case from Milton v. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court of StateOpinion
No. 28121
September 30, 1996
Original petition for a writ of prohibition or mandamus.
Foreign corporate parents of domestic corporations that owned psychiatric hospital filed petition for writ of prohibition or mandamus seeking order requiring the district court to dismiss psychiatric patient's tort action against them for lack of personal jurisdiction. The supreme court held that patients adduced sufficient evidence of agency control by parent corporations to establish prima facie showing of in personam jurisdiction.
Petition denied.Lionel Sawyer Collins and Jeffrey D. Menicucci, Reno, for Petitioners.
Kevin M. Berry, Reno, for Real Parties in Interest.
OPINION
In this original petition, petitioners seek to have respondents' tort action against them dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. The dispute arises out of tortious conduct allegedly suffered by real parties in interest ("plaintiffs") while they were patients at a Nevada psychiatric hospital. The hospital was owned, at different times, by two Nevada corporations, both defendants in the underlying action. Petitioners, also defendants in the underlying action, are the foreign corporate parents or their successors of the domestic corporations and their successors. Petitioners seek extraordinary relief from this court on the ground that the Nevada District Court does not have jurisdiction over their persons and therefore is without authority to proceed against them.
The appropriate remedy for a district court's erroneous refusal to quash service of process is a writ of prohibition. Trump v. District Court, 109 Nev. 687, 692, 857 P.2d 740, 743 (1993).
The district court denied petitioners' pretrial motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction after concluding that plaintiffs had adduced sufficient evidence of agency or control by the parent corporations to establish a prima facie showing of in personam jurisdiction. We have made a de novo review of the evidence presented to the district court and conclude that the district court reached the correct result. See Boit v. Gar-Tec Products, Inc., 967 F.2d 671, 678-79 (1st Cir. 1992) (nondeferential, de novo standard applied on review of district court order dismissing claim for lack of jurisdiction over the person). Although this conclusion disposes of this matter, we emphasize that petitioners may still require plaintiffs to prove personal jurisdiction by a preponderance of the evidence at trial.
NRCP 12(d) provides that a pretrial motion for dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction "shall be heard and determined before trial on application of any party, unless the court orders that the hearing and determination thereof be deferred until the trial." When the district court applies the prima facie standard of review — as it presumably did in this case as there was never an evidentiary hearing — and denies the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, the district court is implicitly, if not explicitly, ordering "that hearing and determination [of the motion to dismiss] be deferred until the trial." Boit, 967 F.2d at 678 (interpreting identical Fed.R. Civ. Proc. 12(d)). Thus, so long as the personal jurisdiction issue is properly presented to the district court prior to trial, a defendant does not waive the right to challenge jurisdiction by making an appearance at trial and arguing the case on the merits. See generally Trump, 109 Nev. 687, 857 P.2d 740 (setting forth in detail the procedural aspects of an in personam jurisdictional challenge).
For the reasons set forth above, the petition for a writ of prohibition is denied.
STEFFEN, C. J., SPRINGER, SHEARING and ROSE, JJ., and ZENOFF, Sr. J., concur.
THE HONORABLE THOMAS L. STEFFEN, Chief Justice, appointed THE HONORABLE DAVID ZENOFF, Senior Justice, to sit in the place of THE HONORABLE CLIFF YOUNG, Justice. Nev. Const. art. 6, § 19; SCR 10.