However, courts give less priority to plaintiffs when they represent a class and when they do not have a connection with the forum. Owner-Operator Indep. Drivers Ass'n, Inc, v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 382 F.Supp.2d 821, 824 (W.D. Va. 2005) .
nd noting that "all of the actions forming the basis for the present suit occurred outside of this District"); Lou v. Belzberg, 834 F. 2d 730, 739 (9th Cir. 1987) (finding that the agreement at issue was negotiated and executed in New York and "the majority of the witnesses lived and worked in the New York area"); Gomez v. Kroll Factual Data, Inc., Civil Action No. 12-02773, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 23130, at *7, *9 (D. Md. Feb. 19, 2013) (permitting transfer where defendant provided affidavits from three representatives indicating that they were located in Colorado and all of the relevant documentation, except one list that was publicly available, was located in Colorado); Georgouses v. Natec Res., 963 F. Supp. 728, 731 (N.D. Ill. 1997) (noting that "the majority of potential witnesses," as well as two of the three individual defendants, were residents of Texas, and also that there might have been a "personal jurisdictional problem" with the individual defendants in the original forum); Owner-Operator Indep. Drivers Ass'n v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 382 F. Supp. 2d 821, 825 (W.D. Va. 2005) (noting that defendant's employee witnesses and other non-party witnesses resided either in or closer to the proposed forum state). Here, HireRight has not identified a single non-party witness, and it has identified only two employee witnesses residing in Tennessee.
This puts the locus of operative facts in that state. See Intellectuals, PLLC v. Clorox Co., No. 10-12415, 2010 WL 5129014, at *3 (E.D. Mich. Dec. 10, 2010) (finding that the locus of operative facts was the place where the defendant made the critical decisions giving rise to the lawsuit); Owner-Operator Indep. Drivers Ass'n, Inc. v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 382 F. Supp. 2d 821, 825 (W.D. Va. 2005) (same); see also Buchanan v. Metz, No. 12-15511, 2013 WL 3387803, at *4 (E.D. Mich. July 8, 2013) (("Litigation should proceed in that place where the case finds its center of gravity.") (internal quotations omitted)). And although Plaintiffs speculate that some of the Defendant's decisions may have been made in Canada, that would still put the locus of operative facts outside of this forum.
Accordingly, the Rusts' choice of a Virginia forum is given substantial consideration. See Owner-Operator Indep. Drivers Ass `n, Inc. v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 382 F. Supp. 2d 821, 824 (W.D. Va. 2005) (explaining that plaintiff's choice of forum is given considerable deference when that forum is the district in which the plaintiff resides and where there is a close nexus between the forum and the underlying claim). 2.