In Re Puerto Rico Air Disaster Litigation

340 F. Supp. 492
CourtDistrict Court, D. Puerto Rico
DecidedMarch 7, 1972
DocketM.D.L. No. 47, Civ. A. Nos. 70-57, 70-58, 70-61, 70-62, 70-76, 70-77 to 70-79
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 340 F. Supp. 492 (In Re Puerto Rico Air Disaster Litigation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re Puerto Rico Air Disaster Litigation, 340 F. Supp. 492 (prd 1972).

Opinion

340 F.Supp. 492 (1972)

In re PUERTO RICO AIR DISASTER LITIGATION.
Michael J. HUDACEK, Executor of the Estate of Joseph J. Hudacek a/k/a Joseph Hudacek, Deceased, Plaintiffs,
v.
PUERTO RICO INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES, INC., et al., Defendants.

M.D.L. No. 47, Civ. A. Nos. 70-57, 70-58, 70-61, 70-62, 70-76, 70-77 to 70-79.

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

March 7, 1972.

*493 *494 Arthur D. Dalessandro, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Falvello, Ustynoski, Giuliani & Bernstein, Hazelton, Pa., Michael J. Hudacek, Plymouth, Pa., for plaintiffs; Anthony C. Falvello, Joseph J. Ustynoski, Hazelton, Pa., of counsel.

Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens, New York City, for defendants; Walter E. Rutherford, Robert L. Alpert, New York City, of counsel.

EDWARD WEINFELD, District Judge.

Plaintiffs, in their representative capacities, commenced these wrongful death[1] and survival[2] actions to recover damages arising out of the deaths of their respective four decedents, who were killed on March 5, 1969, while passengers in an airplane which crashed in the El Junque mountain range in the vicinity of San Juan, Puerto Rico, enroute from the island of St. Thomas to San Juan. The defendant, Puerto Rico International Airlines, Inc. (herein PRINAIR), a Puerto Rican corporation, was the owner and operator of the aircraft. The decedents were residents of Pennsylvania, as are the plaintiff representatives, and the actions were commenced in the Middle District of Pennsylvania[3] on February 19, 1970, based upon federal diversity jurisdiction.

Subsequently, on March 4, 1970, four additional actions were commenced, also in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, naming as additional defendants Great American Insurance Company and United States Aviation Underwriters, Inc. Thereafter, all eight actions were transferred to the District of Puerto Rico pursuant to the Multidistrict Litigation Act, 28 U.S.C., section 1407,[4] where plaintiffs also have pending four actions based upon the same claims as advanced in their Pennsylvania actions. Following argument on a motion to dismiss the Pennsylvania actions on various grounds,[5] plaintiffs consented to the dismissal with prejudice as to Union,[6] Great American Insurance Company and the United States Aviation Underwriters, Inc. Thus, the sole remaining defendant is PRINAIR, which now moves to dismiss the Pennsylvania actions for lack of personal jurisdiction on the ground that it is a Puerto Rican corporation doing business exclusively there; that it is not registered to do *495 business in Pennsylvania and does no business there.

Since federal jurisdiction is based upon diversity of citizenship, the law of Pennsylvania governs on the issue of "doing business" subject to federal constitutional limitations.[7] Those federal constitutional limitations require that before a state may subject a foreign corporation to its jurisdiction upon a claim arising out of the state, the corporation's activities within the state must be sufficient in amount and kind so that it is "reasonable and just" to require it to respond to the lawsuit there.[8] The plaintiffs have the burden of establishing the facts necessary to sustain their claim of jurisdiction,[9] and the issue must be decided within the framework of the particular facts of this case.

Plaintiffs took extensive depositions of officers and directors of PRINAIR and Union, and these form a part of the record upon which plaintiffs seek to uphold, and the defendant resists, jurisdiction. A careful study of the voluminous depositions demonstrates that the traditional indicia of "doing business" are absent; further, that the principal ground advanced to uphold jurisdiction, the so-called interline arrangements which PRINAIR has with other carriers and its advertising in trade magazines and periodicals, hereafter discussed, is insufficient to subject PRINAIR to in personam jurisdiction in Pennsylvania. Tested under Pennsylvania's admittedly liberal foreign corporation jurisdiction law,[10] the facts here presented do not make PRINAIR amenable to its jurisdiction. Section 1011, subd. C of its Business Corporation Law[11] provides as follows:

"For the purposes of determining jurisdictions of courts within this Commonwealth, the doing by any corporation in this Commonwealth of a series of similar acts for the purpose of thereby realizing pecuniary benefit or otherwise accomplishing an object, or doing a single act in this Commonwealth for such purpose, with the intention of thereby initiating a series of such acts, shall constitute `doing business.' For the purposes of this subsection the shipping of merchandise directly or indirectly into or through this Commonwealth shall be considered the doing of such an act in this Commonwealth."

PRINAIR operates its planes between San Juan, Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas, St. Croix and other points in the Caribbean. The evidence abundantly establishes that it maintains no office or other place of business, nor has it any office address or telephone listing, in Pennsylvania; that it has no bank account there; that it has not shipped merchandise directly or indirectly to or through the state, nor has it bought or sold merchandise there; that it owns or leases no property there; that it has flown no airplanes in the Commonwealth; that it maintains no facility for the sale of tickets there; that its employees have never solicited business or advertised in the state. All of its activities, operational and executive, are carried on in and directed by its officers and personnel *496 from its San Juan, Puerto Rico office, where its financial and corporate records are maintained, as well as those documents required by governmental authorities; most of the meetings of its board of directors are held there and some are held in New York City.

Plaintiffs' claim that PRINAIR's parent corporation, Union, a New Jersey corporation, with its principal place of business in Verona, Pennsylvania, is PRINAIR's alter ego is not borne out by the record. On the contrary, PRINAIR, subsequent to the acquisition of 100% of its stock by Union Corporation in December 1969, nine months after the accident, continued to carry on its corporate functions, operating and executive, as it did prior thereto. PRINAIR's corporate identity has been strictly preserved since it became Union's subsidiary; its activities and records and those of its parent are kept separate and distinct at all times. Each maintains the integrity of its corporate existence separate and apart from the other. In sum, there is "rigorous adherence to the formalities customarily associated with separate corporations ...."[12]

That Union is doing business and maintains its principal place of business in Pennsylvania does not subject a subsidiary to Pennsylvania jurisdiction so long as it is maintained as a separate and independent unit from Union.[13] Nor is the fact that a number of directors and officers are the same for parent and the subsidiary in and of itself sufficient to subject the non-resident subsidiary to jurisdiction, absent a showing that the parent is the subsidiary's alter ego.[14]

Plaintiffs, however, contend that certain acts performed at Union's office in Verona, Pennsylvania on behalf of PRINAIR satisfy the test of doing business under Pennsylvania law.

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340 F. Supp. 492, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-puerto-rico-air-disaster-litigation-prd-1972.