Floyd v. Western Oilfields Supply Company

CourtDistrict Court, D. Idaho
DecidedApril 7, 2020
Docket2:19-cv-00464
StatusUnknown

This text of Floyd v. Western Oilfields Supply Company (Floyd v. Western Oilfields Supply Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Idaho primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Floyd v. Western Oilfields Supply Company, (D. Idaho 2020).

Opinion

FOR THE DISTRICT OF IDAHO

JACK FLOYD, an individual, Case No. 2:19-cv-00464-DWM

Plaintiff,

vs. ORDER

WESTERN OILFIELDS SUPPLY

COMPANY, a Delaware corporation,

d/b/a Rain for Rent, d/b/a Lake Company,

d/b/a WOSCO Foundry; JOHN DOES I-

X, whose true name is unknown,

Defendants.

Defendant Western Oilfields Supply Company (“Western Oilfields”) seeks to dismiss this personal injury product liability case for lack of personal jurisdiction pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2). (Doc. 3.) Also pending are Western Oilfields’ motion to strike, (Doc. 16), and Plaintiff Jack Floyd’s motion to stay or alternatively transfer the case, (Doc. 11). All three motions are denied. BACKGROUND I. The Incident On October 10, 2017, Floyd, an employee of CASS, Inc., was disbanding a bale of aluminum pipe at a CASS industrial recycling facility in Kootenai County, Idaho when the bale burst without warning, causing him serious injury. (Compl., Doc. 1-4 at ¶ 4.) Western Oilfields sells, distributes, markets, packages, and labels scrap material in the scrap material from Western Oilfields it converts them into raw material for sale to other businesses at its facility in Kootenai County. (Id. at ¶ 3.) Floyd alleges that Western Oilfields knew, or ought to have known, that there was a serious risk of the bale bursting

from the moment it was banded and placed under pressure. (Id. at ¶ 19.) II. Western Oilfields’ Operations Relevant to the present motions, the parties dispute the connection between Western Oilfields and Idaho. Western Oilfields does business under two other names,

Lake Company and Rain for Rent. (Bastian Decl., Doc. 5 at ¶ 3.) “Rain for Rent is a supplier/retailer of new temporary liquid handling solutions including pumps, tanks, filtration and spill containment.” (Id. at ¶ 4.) It has various retail locations around the

world, including three in Idaho. (Id.) Its Idaho locations primarily sell pivot irrigation systems. (Id.) Lake Company, on the other hand, creates bales of aluminum scrap at its location in Visalia, California. (Id. at ¶ 6.) According to Western Oilfields, those bales are purchased by CASS in Oakland, California and transported to CASS’s facility there.

(Id.) Put differently, Lake Company does not transport the bales to Idaho, and it has no control over what CASS does with the bales once delivered in Oakland. (Id. at ¶ 7; Doc. 15-1 at ¶¶ 4, 7.) Moreover, Western Oilfields states that the bales do not include any

aluminum pipe for the Idaho Rain for Rent locations. (Doc. 5 at ¶¶ 9−11.) Floyd, on the other hand, alleges that the bale at issue here was shipped directly from a Rain for Rent facility in Visalia, California to CASS in Hauser, Idaho without alleges that such direct shipments were common. (Id. at ¶ 9.) ANALYSIS I. Motion to Strike

In response to Western Oilfields’ motion to dismiss, Floyd attached his own declaration that addresses CASS’s shipping processes and includes as attachments some scrap metal invoices and other CASS documents. (See Docs. 10, 10-1.) Western Oilfields seeks to strike that declaration and its attachments on the grounds that Floyd

“failed to offer sufficient testimony to establish the necessary foundation for his speculative and hearsay statements or to authenticate the [attached] documents.” (Doc. 16-1 at 2.) Contrary to that characterization, Floyd’s declaration explicitly states that he

is familiar with CASS’s recordkeeping procedures, (Doc. 10 at ¶ 3), he reviewed the business records related to the bale shipped on October 10, 2017, (id. at ¶¶ 5−8), and that he has personal experience with shipments from Rain for Rent in California to CASS in

Idaho, (id. at ¶ 10). This type of knowledge and experience makes him a “qualified witness” under Rule 803(6) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. See United States v. Ray, 930 F.2d 1368, 1370 (9th Cir. 1990) (“The phrase ‘other qualified witness’ is broadly interpreted to require only that the witness understand the record-keeping system.”). It is

not enough that Western Oilfields’ own recordkeeper disagrees with Floyd’s assertions. The motion to strike (Doc. 16) is denied. “Where a defendant moves to dismiss a complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff bears the burden of demonstrating that jurisdiction is appropriate.” Schwarzenegger v. Fred Martin Motor Co., 374 F.3d 797, 800 (9th Cir. 2004). “Where,

as here, the motion is based on written materials rather than an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff need only make a prima facie showing of jurisdictional facts.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). At this stage, uncontroverted allegations in the complaint are taken as true. Dole Food Co., Inc. v. Watts, 303 F.3d 1104, 1108 (9th Cir. 2002).

“Federal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons.” Picot v. Weston, 780 F.3d 1206, 1211 (9th Cir. 2015) (quoting Daimler AG v. Bauman, 134 S. Ct. 746, 753 (2014)). In Idaho, personal jurisdiction is governed

by the Idaho long-arm statute, Idaho Code § 5-514, and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Gailey v. Whiting, 339 P.3d 1131, 1134 (Idaho 2014). A. Idaho’s Long-Arm Statute Under Idaho’s long-arm statute, an Idaho court has personal jurisdiction over an

out-of-state defendant if the defendant is subject to any cause of action arising from (a) the transaction of business within the state or (b) the commission of a tortious act within the state. Idaho Code § 5-514.

1. Transaction of Business The act of transacting business within Idaho is defined as “the doing of any act for the purpose of realizing pecuniary benefit or accomplishing or attempting to accomplish, firm, company, association or corporation.” Id. The mere fact that Western Oilfields has a subsidiary operating in Idaho is not by itself sufficient to confer jurisdiction. Rather, the suit for which jurisdiction is sought must arise out of or relate to the defendant’s

contact with Idaho.2 Telford v. Smith Cty., 314 P.3d 179, 183, 185 (Idaho 2013). Western Oilfields maintains that all of its interactions with CASS took place through its other subsidiary, Lake Company, and that all of those interactions occurred in California. (Doc. 5 at ¶¶ 5–7.) But the record at this preliminary stage, when viewed in favor of

Floyd, does not support that conclusion. While Western Oilfields may be correct that no shipments were made directly from the Lake Company facility in California to CASS in Idaho, (see id. at ¶ 11), the documentation indicates that Rain for Rent was involved with

CASS in the buying, selling, and shipping of scrap metal, (see Doc. 15-1 at 39), and may have been involved in a direct shipment to CASS’s Idaho location, (see Doc. 10-1 at 9).

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