Dyson v. Dutko Ragen Homes & Invs., KW United

Decision Date27 April 2022
Docket Number21-cv-02280 (APM)
CourtU.S. District Court — District of Columbia
PartiesMWATA DYSON, Plaintiff, v. DUTKO RAGEN HOMES & INVESTMENTS, KW UNITED, d/b/a KELLER WILLIAMS, et al . Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

Amit P. Mehta, United States District Court Judge

Plaintiff Mwata Dyson filed this action against multiple Defendants alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”). Defendants Northern Virginia Property Management Pros Co., doing business as Real Property Management Pros (“RPMP”), and Marc Blackwood move to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction. Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction ECF No. 4 [hereinafter RPMP's Mot.]. Defendants Dutko | Ragen Homes & Investments, KW, doing business as Keller Williams (Keller Williams), and Tasheika S Penn move to dismiss Plaintiff's complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) and Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Defs.' Mot. to Dismiss First Am. Compl., ECF No. 15 [hereinafter Keller Williams Defs.' Mot.]. For the reasons stated below, Defendants' Motions are granted. Plaintiff's request for jurisdictional discovery in response to RPMP's Motion is denied.

I.
A.

RPMP, led by its president Marc Blackwood, is a property management company licensed and organized in Virginia, with its principal office in Gainesville, Virginia. See RPMP's Mot., Defs.' Mem. of P. & A., ECF No. 4-1 [hereinafter RPMP's Mem.], at 2; Defs.' Mot., Decl. of Marc Blackwood, ECF No. 4-2, at 2; Compl., ECF No. 1 [hereinafter Compl.], ¶¶ 6, 11. RPMP manages a property located at 7978 Vigne Court in Vienna, Virginia (the “Vienna Property”). See RPMP's Mem. at 2. Plaintiff retained the realty services of Keller Williams and its agent Tasheika Penn to find a rental unit to rent for himself and his two young children. Penn brought the Vienna Property to Plaintiff's attention. See Defs. Keller Williams & Tasheika Penn's Mem. in Supp. of Mot. to Dismiss, ECF No. 16, at 1-2. RPMP received an application from Plaintiff on July 19, 2021, to lease the Vienna Property. See Compl. ¶ 19. In the weeks that followed, RPMP purportedly agreed to the lease terms with Plaintiff before reneging on the agreement prior to Plaintiff's move. See Compl. ¶¶ 19-26; RPMP's Mem. at 2. Plaintiff claims that Defendants' actions were motivated by racial animus in violation of the FHA. Compl. ¶¶ 6-8.

B.

Plaintiff filed his initial complaint against Defendants RPMP, Blackwood, Keller Williams, and others on August 27, 2021. See Compl. at 1. RPMP and Blackwood moved to dismiss the Complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction on October 5, 2021. See RPMP's Mot. at 1. Keller Williams then moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim on October 12, 2021. Def. Keller Williams's Mot. to Dismiss Compl. Pursuant to Rule 12(B)(6), ECF No. 6. Plaintiff then filed his First Amended Complaint (“FAC”) on October 27, 2021, which, among other things, added Penn as a defendant. First Am. Compl., ECF No. 13 [hereinafter FAC]. The court treated that pleading as an amendment as of right as to Keller Williams because Plaintiff filed the amendment within 21 days of Keller Williams's motion, thereby mooting the motion. Minute Order, Oct. 27, 2021. The court did not, however, deem RPMP and Blackwood's motion to be moot because Plaintiff, without seeking leave of court, filed the amended complaint more than 21 days after those defendants had filed their motion. Id. Keller Williams and Penn then moved jointly to dismiss the FAC pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) and Rule 8. Keller Williams Defs.' Mot. at 1.

Both motions are now ripe for consideration. The court begins with RPMP and Blackwood's jurisdictional challenge before turning to Keller Williams and Penn's motion.

II.

On a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction under Rule 12(b)(2), the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing the court's personal jurisdiction over a defendant. See Crane v. N.Y. Zoological Soc'y, 894 F.2d 454, 456 (D.C. Cir. 1990). The plaintiff must demonstrate the defendant's connection with the forum by alleging specific facts. Second Amend. Found. v. U.S. Conf. of Mayors, 274 F.3d 521, 524 (D.C. Cir. 2001). Factual discrepancies in the record “must be resolved in favor of the plaintiff.” Crane, 894 F.2d at 456. The court, however, need not “treat all of the plaintiff's allegations as true” and may consider affidavits and other materials to determine whether to exercise jurisdiction. Cap. Bank Int'l Ltd. v. Citigroup, Inc., 276 F.Supp.2d 72, 74 (D.D.C. 2003).

A plaintiff can establish personal jurisdiction over a defendant in one of two ways: they can either prove the court has “general (sometimes called all-purpose) jurisdiction [or] specific (sometimes called case-linked) jurisdiction.” Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S.Ct. 1017, 1024 (2021). Plaintiff invokes both as to RPMP and Blackwood but succeeds as to neither.

A.

General jurisdiction “permits a court to assert jurisdiction over a defendant based on a forum connection unrelated to the underlying suit.” Erwin-Simpson v. AirAsia Berhad, 985 F.3d 883, 889 (D.C. Cir. 2021). A court may exercise such jurisdiction only when the defendant's “affiliations with the [forum] are so ‘continuous and systematic' as to render [the defendant] essentially at home in the forum State.” Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915, 919 (2011) (quoting Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 317 (1945)).

Plaintiff relies on outdated D.C. Circuit precedent to make the case that RPMP's website satisfies the requirements of general jurisdiction. Pl.'s Opp'n to RPMP's Mot., ECF No. 11, Pl.'s Mem. of P. & A. in Supp. of Pl.'s Opp'n to RPMP's Mot., ECF No. 11-1 [hereinafter Pl.'s RPMP Opp'n], at 7-8. Plaintiff cites FC Investment Group LC v. IFXMarkets, LTD., 529 F.3d 1087 (D.C. Cir. 2008), for the proposition that the interactivity of a website combined with District residents' use of it in a “continuous and systematic” way is sufficient to confer general jurisdiction over an out-of-District company. Pl.'s RPMP Opp'n at 8. But the D.C. Circuit expressly overruled FC Investment Group LC last year in Erwin-Simpson. Erwin-Simpson, 985 F.3d at 891 ([T]he reasoning underlying our precedent has been eroded by intervening Supreme Court decisions Because Gorman and FC Investment Group set a lower bar, we overrule our precedent on that point as inconsistent with Daimler and Goodyear.”). Erwin-Simpson holds that, for a foreign defendant corporation's online contacts to establish general jurisdiction, they “would need to render the corporation ‘essentially at home' in the District.” Erwin-Simpson, 985 F.3d at 892 (quoting Goodyear, 564 U.S. at 919). Here, Plaintiff points only to RPMP's website's interactive pop-up prompt and a single statement on the website that Washington, D.C., is among the company's “Areas Served, ” Pl.'s RPMP Opp'n at 8, but those attributes fall well short of establishing RPMP to be “essentially at home” in the District. The court thus lacks general jurisdiction over RPMP.

B.

That leaves specific jurisdiction. Specific jurisdiction “depends on an affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy.” Goodyear, 564 U.S. at 919 (cleaned up). While the controversy must relate to the defendant's forum connections, the defendant's connections need only be “some act by which [the defendant] purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State.” Ford, 141 S.Ct. at 1024-25 (quoting Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 253 (1958)). For the court to satisfy itself that it has specific jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant, the court must undertake two inquiries: first, whether the District of Columbia's long-arm statute authorizes the exercise of the court's power; and second, whether a finding of jurisdiction satisfies constitutional due process. GTE New Media Servs. Inc. v. BellSouth Corp., 199 F.3d 1343, 1347 (D.C. Cir. 2000).

Plaintiff cites three different subsections of the D.C. long-arm statute, and he makes two cursory arguments to support personal jurisdiction under those subsections. Pl.'s RPMP Opp'n at 7 (citing D.C. Code § 13-423(a)(1), (3)-(4)). First, Plaintiff asserts that Defendants' regular and systematic contacts with Plaintiff Dyson during the course of the transaction as stated above to solicit his business . . . establish[] specific jurisdiction over these Defendants.” Id. at 8. Second, he maintains that “specific jurisdiction exists because these Defendants were co-conspirators with other co-Defendants as pled in the Complaint.” Id. Plaintiff hardly elaborates as to either ground, but in any event they fail.

Section 13-423(a). D.C. Code § 13-423(a)(1) permits exercise of personal jurisdiction over a “person, who acts directly or by an agent, as to a claim of relief arising from the person's transacting any business in the District of Columbia.” This provision is “given an expansive interpretation” that is “coextensive with the due process clause.” Mouzavirs v. Baxter, 434 A.2d 988, 992 (D.C. 1981).

When, as here, the business transacted is contractual in nature, the question is whether the contract has a “substantial connection” to the District of Columbia. Helmer v. Doletskaya, 393 F.3d 201, 205 (D.C. Cir. 2004). “The mere fact that the other party to the contract is a District of Columbia resident does not create a ‘substantial connection.' Nat'l Resident Matching Program v. Elec. Residency LLC, 720 F.Supp.2d 92, 100 (D.D.C. 2010). Instead courts “must evaluate the prior negotiations and contemplated future consequences, along with the terms of the contract and the parties' actual course of dealing.” Helmer, 393 F.3d at 205 (internal quotation...

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