BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co. KG v. Shaik

• Court: Texas Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Justice Young
• Citation: BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co. KG v. Shaik, 716 S.W.3d 98 (Tex. 2025)
• Docket Number: 23-0756
• Decision Date: 20 June 2025
• Parties: BRP-ROTAX GMBH & CO. KG, Petitioner, v. Sheema SHAIK and Touseef Siddiqui, Respondents
• topic: Aeronautics,Commercial Litigation,Civil Procedure

716 S.W.3d 98

BRP-ROTAX GMBH & CO. KG, Petitioner,

v.Sheema SHAIK and Touseef Siddiqui, Respondents

No. 23-0756

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued December 4, 2024

OPINION DELIVERED: June 20, 2025

On Petition for Review from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas

James M. Parker Jr., Naman Howell Smith & Lee, PLLC, San Antonio, Jackie Robinson, Naman Howell Smith & Lee, PLLC, Fort Worth, Wallace B. Jefferson, Alexander Dubose & Jefferson LLP, Austin, Ralph Pagano, John M. Socolow, Fitzpatrick, Hunt, & Pagano, LLP, New York, NY, for Petitioner.

George S. Christian, Austin, for Amicus Curiae Texas Civil Justice League.

Alex J. Whitman, G. Don Swaim, M. Ross Cunningham, Cunningham Swaim, LLP, Dallas, for Other Interested Parties Piper Aircraft, Piper Sport, Excite Aircraft d/b/a US Sport Aircraft, & Patrick Arznen.

Andrew L. Payne, Shannon T. Hays, Payne Mitchell Ramsey Law Group, Dallas, for Respondent.

Justice Young

delivered the opinion of the Court.

We must decide whether Texas courts may exercise specific personal jurisdiction over BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co. KG, an Austrian company that designs and manufactures aircraft engines. The answer depends on our application of the so-called “stream-of-commerce-plus” test, under which Rotax is subject to jurisdiction in Texas only if it had an intent or purpose to serve the Texas market. But far from reflecting Rotax’s purposeful availment, the record conclusively establishes the opposite. As we have repeatedly explained, the stream-of-commerce-plus test requires a defendant to specifically target Texas; it is not enough that a defendant may foresee some of its products’ eventually arriving here.

This case requires us to break no new jurisprudential ground. Under our precedents, the lawsuit against Rotax should have been dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, and the lower courts erred by instead proceeding with the litigation. We therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and render judgment dismissing the case against Rotax.

I

Tragedy struck respondents Sheema Shaik and Touseef Siddiqui (together, the Shaiks) when a Piper Light Sport Aircraft suddenly lost engine power and crashed on the runway at an airport in Addison, Texas. Sheema, a passenger in the plane, suffered permanent and life-altering injuries. Touseef, her husband, witnessed the harrowing incident. As Texas residents injured in Texas, the Shaiks chose Dallas County as the place to adjudicate their claims and hold to account the numerous parties they believed responsible for their injuries. They asserted claims for strict liability, negligence, and gross negligence against the designer and manufacturer of the aircraft, the seller of the aircraft, and Rotax, which designed and manufactured the engine that lost power. The Shaiks initially sued multiple other parties, too, but dropped their claims against them in various amended petitions, leading to the sixth amended petition, which is their live pleading.

We are concerned today only with Rotax, which is headquartered in Gunskirchen, Austria. The Shaiks allege that Texas courts have specific personal jurisdiction over Rotax because it “intentionally placed” the allegedly defective engine “into the stream of commerce” and “moved it along” to Texas.

Rotax responded to the suit by filing a special appearance under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 120a, requesting that the court dismiss the case against it for lack of personal jurisdiction. Rotax relied on a declaration from its general manager and vice president of sales who stated, among other things, that Rotax:

• designs and manufactures its engines exclusively in Austria;

• never contracted with the Shaiks or any other Texas resident for the sale, installation, or repair of its engines;

• does no business in Texas;

• has no employees in Texas;

• has no offices in Texas;

• does not own or lease any real property in Texas; and

• has never targeted any advertising or other marketing activities to Texas residents.

The declaration further explained that Rotax sells its engines under distribution agreements with independent distributors, all of which are located not just outside Texas but outside the United States, and that Rotax does not provide direct product support for or repair Rotax engines.

Rotax sold the engine at issue here, for example, to Kodiak Research Ltd., a Bahamian company. Kodiak shipped the engine from Austria to the Bahamas. Kodiak then sold the engine to Lockwood Aviation Supply, Inc., its sub-distributor in Florida that was itself “an independent Service Centre located in Sebring, Florida,” and Lockwood then sold the engine to U.S. Sports Aircraft, the Texas company that installed the engine into the plane that crashed.

The Shaiks concede that Rotax lacks a physical presence in or direct connection to Texas. They acknowledge the attenuated way in which the allegedly defective engine reached Texas. But they counter that Rotax had numerous—albeit indirect—contacts sufficient for Texas courts to exercise specific personal jurisdiction. Any one of these contacts, they say, is enough to show that Rotax made “deliberate and systematic attempts to establish a market” in Texas and that “Rotax has pervasively served [that] market for decades and has reaped substantial profits by doing so.” Had Rotax wished to avoid litigation here, the Shaiks continue, it should have “taken affirmative action” and severed its connection to Texas, “just as it d[id] [with] Iraq, Iran, and North Korea” by expressly forbidding its independent distributors from shipping Rotax engines to those countries.

The trial court and court of appeals agreed. Affirming the trial court’s denial of Rotax’s special appearance, the court of appeals concluded that Rotax “purposefully availed itself of Texas under the ‘stream of commerce-plus’ test.” 698 S.W.3d 305, 309 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2023). Its purposeful-availment analysis purportedly “focus[ed] on the relationship among the forum, the defendant, and the litigation,” and so it discussed the distribution agreement between Rotax and Kodiak; Rotax’s website; a repair center in Bulverde, Texas, known as “Texas Rotax”; and the number of Rotax engines registered in Texas. Id. at 313-14.

But underlying the court of appeals’ review of whether the trial court had specific personal jurisdiction over Rotax were the allegations that the Shaiks are Texas residents, that the aircraft was “leased and operated by a Texas resident” who owned and operated a business in Texas, that “[t]he crash and [the Shaiks’] damages occurred in Texas,” and that Rotax “is a global company.” Id. at 313, 317. The opinion asserted an intent to follow this Court’s decisions in State v. Volkswagen Aktienge-sellschaft, 669 S.W.3d 399 (Tex. 2023), and Luciano v. SprayFoamPolymers.com, LLC, 625 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. 2021), as well as the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, 592 U.S. 351, 141 S.Ct. 1017, 209 L.Ed.2d 225 (2021). See 698 S.W.3d at 317-18. In doing so, the court of appeals concluded that Rotax “served a market in Texas for the very engine that [the Shaiks] alleged malfunctioned and caused them injury in this state” and “that exercising jurisdiction over [Rotax] would not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice,” meaning that the exercise of specific personal jurisdiction over Rotax was proper. Id. at 309, 317.

Rotax filed a petition for review, which we granted.

II

[1, 2] A defendant’s amenability to specific personal jurisdiction in Texas presents a question of law that we review de novo. Old Republic Nat’l Title Ins. Co. v. Bell, 549 S.W.3d 550, 558 (Tex. 2018). Where the “relevant facts” are undisputed, “we consider only the legal question [of] whether [those] facts establish Texas jurisdiction.” Id.

[3, 4] Our analysis begins with some familiar boilerplate. “A court must have personal jurisdiction over a defendant to issue a binding judgment.” LG Chem Am., Inc. v. Morgan, 670 S.W.3d 341, 346 (Tex. 2023). Texas courts, specifically, exercise personal jurisdiction over litigants by reference to the Texas long-arm statute and federal constitutional due-process guarantees. See id.; see also Moncrief Oil Int’l Inc. v. OAO Gazprom, 414 S.W.3d 142, 149 (Tex. 2013) (quoting Moki Mac River Expeditions v. Drugg, 221 S.W.3d 569, 574 (Tex. 2007)). While “[a]llegations that a tort was committed in Texas satisfy our long-arm statute,” those allegations “must also satisfy due-process requirements.” Luciano, 625 S.W.3d at 8 (first citing Moncrief Oil, 414 S.W.3d at 149; and then citing Spir Star AG v. Kimich, 310 S.W.3d 868, 872 (Tex. 2010)).

Adhering to the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedents, our primary concern in personal-jurisdiction cases is “the constitutional right to due process.” LG Chem, 670 S.W.3d at 346 (citing U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1); cf Retamco Operating, Inc. v. Republic Drilling Co., 278 S.W.3d 333, 337 (Tex. 2009). Rotax has not invoked the Texas Constitution’s due-course clause, see Tex. Const. art. I, § 19, so our analysis concerns only the limits imposed by federal constitutional law. We walk the path initially charted by International Shoe Co. v. Washington, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that the exercise of personal jurisdiction is proper where the nonresident defendant has “certain minimum contacts” with the forum state “such that the maintenance of the suit” against it “does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’ “ 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 90 L.Ed. 95 (1945) (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457, 463, 61 S.Ct. 339, 85 L.Ed. 278 (1940)).

[5-7] There are “two kinds of personal jurisdiction: general (sometimes called allpurpose) jurisdiction and specific (sometimes called case-linked) jurisdiction.” Ford, 592 U.S. at 358, 141 S.Ct. 1017. The Shaiks contend only that Texas courts may exercise specific personal jurisdiction, which “covers defendants less intimately...