Campbell v. Campbell

262 F. Supp. 3d 701
District Court, N.D. Illinois·Decided February 3, 2017·No. Case No. 16 C 8005·Published·Cited by 18 cases

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Elaine E. Bucklo, United States District Judge

Plaintiff Dawn Campbell (“plaintiff’) has sued her former spouse, Kenneth Campbell (“defendant”), and his company, Campbell Professional Services LLC (“the company”) for defamation.1 Defendant has moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 12(b)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the alternative, he moves pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) to transfer the venue to the District of Minnesota.2 For the reasons below, the motion is denied.

I.

Plaintiffs complaint alleges that she and defendant divorced in 2004. In July 2015, she moved from Minnesota to Illinois to take a job with Inland Real Estate Investment Corporation (“Inland”). In January 2016, defendant sent a series of emails to Inland containing allegedly defamatory statements about plaintiff. Defendant states (and plaintiff does not dispute) that he authored and sent the messages from Shoreview, Minnesota. Among other things, the emails state that plaintiff had previously “sold securities without a license for many years” and had “perpetrated fraud against [i]nvestors” while working for a former employer. See Compl. Ex. D. Defendant also stated that plaintiff was a “bad gambler,” was “not credit-worthy,” and was a “high-risk person.” Id. The first of the messages was submitted to Inland via Inland’s website. Two subsequent mes[705] sages were sent directly to the email account of plaintiffs superior, Rod Curtis (“Curtis”). In addition, defendant sent complaints about plaintiff to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Defendant does not deny sending the messages. He denies that the statements are defamatory, however, because he claims that they are true.

II.

A. Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction

Defendant first argues that plaintiffs complaint should be dismissed because this court lacks personal jurisdiction over him and his company. “The plaintiff has the burden of establishing personal jurisdiction, and where, as here, the issue is raised by a motion to dismiss and decided on the basis of written materials rather than an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff need only make a prima facie showing of jurisdictional facts.” Tamburo v. Dworkin, 601 F.3d 693, 700 (7th Cir. 2010). At this stage, therefore, I “take as true all well-pleaded facts alleged in the complaint and resolve any factual disputes in the affidavits in favor of the plaintiff.” Id.3

“Courts recognize two types of personal jurisdiction: general and specific.” Kipp v. Ski Enter. Corp. of Wisconsin, 783 F.3d 695, 697 (7th Cir. 2015). “General jurisdiction is ‘all-purpose’; it exists only *when the [party’s] affiliations with the State in which suit is brought are so constant and pervasive as to render it essentially at home in the forum State.’” Id. (quoting Daimler AG v. Bauman, — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 746, 751, 187 L.Ed.2d 624 (2014)). “Specific jurisdiction is case-specific; the claim must be linked to the activities or contacts with the forum.” Id.

Here, plaintiff argues only that the court has specific personal jurisdiction over defendant. Specific personal jurisdiction is established where three conditions are met: “(1) the defendant must have purposefully availed himself of the privilege of conducting business in the forum state or purposefully directed his activities at the state; (2) the alleged injury must have arisen from the defendant’s forum-related activities; and (3) the exercise of jurisdiction must comport with traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” Felland v. Clifton, 682 F.3d 665, 673 (7th Cir. 2012) (citations omitted). I consider each of these requirements in turn.

1. Purposeful Direction

The Seventh Circuit has “distilled three requirements ... for determining whether conduct was purposefully directed at the forum state: (1) intentional conduct (or inténtional and allegedly tortious conduct); (2) expressly aimed at the forum state; (3) with the defendant’s knowledge that the effects would be felt — that is, the plaintiff would be injured — in the forum state.” Id. at 674-75 (quotation marks omitted).

These requirements are met here. There can be no question that defendant acted intentionally in composing and sending the emails. It is likewise clear that defendant’s conduct was expressly aimed at Illinois. He sent the emails directly to Inland, which is located in Illinois. And [706] defendant knew (or at least intended) , that plaintiff would be injured in Illinois. Cf Gorapl. Ex. B, Email from Kenneth Campbell to Dawn Campbell (Jan. 25, 2016) (“[A] good fate for you would be panhandling on the streets of Chicago. Then you could compete with rats like you.”). The purpose of his messages was clearly to bring her into disrepute with her employer and to get her fired.

Defendant' argues that his conduct was not expressly directed toward Illinois because he did not know where Curtis lived or where he would open the emails. See Defs.’ Mot. to Dismiss, Ex, B, Kenneth Campbell Aff. ¶ 14 (“As to the communications and emails I sent to Inland Real Estate Corporation, I had no personal knowledge as to where those communications or emails would' be received or opened by Rod Curtis or any other representative of Inland Real Estate Corporation.”). He-argues that under Advanced Tactical Ordnance Systems, LLC v. Real Action Paintball, Inc., 751 F.3d 796 (7th Cir. 2014), the fact that the email might have been opened anywhere means that he did not expressly aim his conduct at Illinois. Advanced Tactical was a trademark infringement suit in which the defendant, Real Action, was alleged to have sent two misleading emails to a list of subscribers. The plaintiff argued that specific personal jurisdiction could be exercised over Real Action in Indiana based on the fact that Indiana residents were among the emails’ recipients. The court disagreed, stating:

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Campbell v. Campbell, 262 F. Supp. 3d 701 (N.D. Ill. 2017).

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