Herederos De Roberto Gomez Cabrera, LLC v. Teck Res. Ltd.

• Decision Date: 12 August 2022
• Docket Number: 21-12834
• Citation: 43 F.4th 1303
• Parties: HEREDEROS DE ROBERTO GOMEZ CABRERA, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant. v. TECK RESOURCES LIMITED, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

43 F.4th 1303

HEREDEROS DE ROBERTO GOMEZ CABRERA, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant.

v.TECK RESOURCES LIMITED, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 21-12834

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Filed: August 12, 2022

Patrick Glenn Dempsey, Alec P. Hayes, Leon Francisco Hirzel, IV, Hirzel Dreyfuss & Dempsey, PLLC, Miami, FL, Pedro V. Roig, David Alexander Villarreal, Roig & Villarreal, PA, Miami, FL, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Jennifer G. Altman, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP, Miami, FL, Robert Sills, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP, New York, NY, for Defendant-Appellee.

Before Newsom, Marcus, Circuit Judges, and Covington,^* District Judge.

Newsom, Circuit Judge:

In 1996, in response to the Cuban government's decades-old program of confiscating private property, Congress enacted the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act—commonly called the Helms-Burton Act. That statute broadly imposes liability on anyone who "traffics" in confiscated Cuban property to which a U.S. national has a claim. The plaintiff in this case, a Florida LLC called Herederos de Roberto Gomez Cabrera, sued a Canadian company, Teck Resources Limited, alleging that it had illegally trafficked in property to which Herederos says it has a claim. We hold that the federal courts don't have personal jurisdiction over Teck, and we therefore affirm the dismissal of Herederos's complaint.

I

In 1960, the revolutionary Cuban government confiscated Roberto Gomez Cabrera's mineral mines. Cabrera's children, who inherited his claim to the mines, allege that Teck, a Canadian corporation, managed the mines and thereby "traffic[ked]" in them in violation of the Helms-Burton Act.

Cabrera's children assigned their claims to a Florida LLC, Herederos de Roberto Gomez Cabrera, and Herederos sued Teck under the Helms-Burton Act in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Broadly speaking, the Act imposes liability on "any person" who "traffics in property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government on or after January 1, 1959." 22 U.S.C. § 6082. Teck moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The district court granted Teck's motion, holding that Florida's long-arm statute didn't provide jurisdiction over Teck and, additionally, that Teck lacked the necessary connection to the United States to establish personal jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2). For the reasons explained below, we agree with the district court.¹

II

As relevant here, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which govern suits brought in federal court, explain that a district court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant if "(A) the defendant is not subject to jurisdiction in any state's courts of general jurisdiction; and (B) exercising jurisdiction is consistent with the United States Constitution and laws." Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(2). The parties here agree that Rule 4(k)(2) ’s first condition applies—Teck isn't "subject to jurisdiction in any state's courts of general jurisdiction." Accordingly, we must decide whether exercising personal jurisdiction here would be "consistent with the ... Constitution." For purposes of this case, the relevant constitutional provision—and we flag this issue because it gets to the nub of the parties’ dispute—is the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause, which applies to the federal government and its courts, not the Fourteenth's, which applies to the states.²

Despite their agreement that the Fifth Amendment governs the personal-jurisdiction inquiry here, Herederos and Teck advance competing jurisdictional analyses. For its part, Teck contends that we should analyze personal jurisdiction under the Fifth Amendment the same way we would under the Fourteenth Amendment—i.e. , ask whether the defendant has sufficient "minimum contacts" with the forum and whether "maintenance of the suit [would] offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’ " Int'l Shoe Co. v. Washington , 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 90 L.Ed. 95 (1945). Herederos, by contrast, urges us to apply a more lenient "arbitrary or fundamentally unfair" standard that we have sometimes used in what it calls "extraterritorial jurisdiction" cases. See Br. of Appellant at 15–16; Reply Br. of Appellant at 4. Although the language and logic of the "extraterritorial jurisdiction" cases can be a little confusing, those decisions, as we'll explain, aren't really about personal jurisdiction at all. Accordingly, we hold that courts should analyze personal jurisdiction under the Fifth Amendment using the same basic standards and tests that apply under the Fourteenth Amendment.

A

We conclude that the personal-jurisdiction analysis under the Fifth Amendment is the same as that under the Fourteenth for three principal reasons.

First , and most importantly, the operative language of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments is materially identical, and it would be incongruous for the same words to generate markedly different doctrinal analyses. Compare U.S. Const. amend. V ("No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."), with U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 ("No State shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.").

Second , this Court has all but held already that the Fifth Amendment's personal-jurisdiction analysis should track the Fourteenth's. See Oldfield v. Pueblo De Bahia Lora, S.A. , 558 F.3d 1210, 1219 n.25 (11th Cir. 2009) ("As the language and policy considerations of the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments are virtually identical, decisions interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause guide us in determining what due process requires in the Fifth Amendment jurisdictional context."); see also SEC v. Marin , 982 F.3d 1341, 1349 (11th Cir. 2020) (conducting "minimum contacts" analysis in case assessing personal jurisdiction under the Fifth Amendment); Fraser v. Smith , 594 F.3d 842, 850 (11th Cir. 2010) (same).

Third , adopting Herederos's preferred "arbitrary or fundamentally unfair" standard for Fifth Amendment cases—rather than the traditional minimum-contacts test—would create unnecessary tension with personal-jurisdiction precedents more generally. Fourteenth Amendment decisions have repeatedly emphasized the heavy burden faced by foreign defendants forced to litigate in U.S. courts, and there's no reason to think that those burdens are any lighter in cases governed by the Fifth Amendment. See, e.g. , Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Superior Ct. , 480 U.S. 102, 116, 107 S.Ct. 1026, 94 L.Ed.2d 92 (1987) (finding no jurisdiction over Japanese corporation partly because of "the international context [and] the heavy burden on the alien defendant"); Oldfield , 558 F.3d at 1221 ("[I]n cases involving international defendants, courts should consider ‘[t]he unique burdens placed upon one who must defend oneself in a foreign legal system.’ " (quoting Asahi , 480 U.S. at 114, 107 S.Ct. 1026 )).

For these fairly straightforward reasons, we think it makes eminent sense to apply the same basic personal-jurisdiction standards in cases arising under the Fifth Amendment as in those arising under the Fourteenth Amendment.

B

What, though, of the "extraterritorial jurisdiction" cases that Herederos cites? In those decisions, Herederos notes, we have said that "the extraterritorial application of the law must comport with due process, meaning that the application of the law must not be arbitrary or fundamentally unfair," United States v. Noel , 893 F.3d 1294, 1301 (11th Cir. 2018), and that the "Due Process Clause prohibits the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction over a defendant when it would be ‘arbitrary or fundamentally unfair,’ " United States v. Baston , 818 F.3d 651, 669 (11th Cir. 2016). But a close review of those cases shows that, in fact, they aren't really about personal jurisdiction at all; rather, at their core, they address what is sometimes called "legislative jurisdiction"—i.e. , the power of Congress (or another lawmaking body, as the case may be) to regulate conduct extraterritorially.

For instance, in United States v. Ibarguen-Mosquera , we looked to international law to determine whether Congress had constitutional authority to criminalize drug trafficking in international waters. See 634 F.3d 1370, 1378–79 (11th Cir. 2011). We held, in particular, that "the enactment of the [Drug Trafficking Vessel Interdiction Act] d[id] not offend the Due Process Clause" of the Fifth Amendment. Id. at 1379 (emphasis added). Similarly, in Noel , we examined an international treaty to determine whether Congress could criminalize a foreign defendant's actions under the federal Hostage Taking Act. See 893 F.3d at 1304. So too, in an earlier "extraterritorial jurisdiction" case, we held that defendants could be charged with a "general understanding of international law" and, consequently, that it didn't violate due process for Congress to criminalize drug offenses involving stateless vessels on the high seas. See United States v. Marino-Garcia , 679 F.2d 1373, 1384 n.19 (11th Cir. 1982).

To be sure, in some of the "extraterritorial jurisdiction" cases, we have analogized to personal-jurisdiction precedents or used language reminiscent of personal-jurisdiction analysis. American Charities for Reasonable Fundraising Regulation, Inc. v. Pinellas County , 221 F.3d 1211 (11th Cir. 2000) (per curiam), is illustrative. The question there was whether a Florida county could apply a charitable-solicitation regulation to individuals and entities who claimed that they engaged in little, if any, activity in the jurisdiction. We began by framing the question presented as one involving "legislative jurisdiction": "A state's legislative jurisdiction is circumscribed by the Due Process Clause." Id . at 1216. In addressing that question, we noted, as relevant here, that "[t]he inquiry into whether sufficient legislative jurisdiction exists is similar to...