Massachusetts School of Law v. American Bar Ass'n

• Decision Date: 11 March 1994
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 93-6206.
• Citation: 846 F. Supp. 374
• Parties: MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL OF LAW AT ANDOVER, INC. v. AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

846 F. Supp. 374

MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL OF LAW AT ANDOVER, INC. v. AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, et al.

Civ. A. No. 93-6206.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

March 11, 1994.

Harold E. Kohn, Joanne Zack, Philadelphia, PA, Lawrence R. Velvel, Michael L. Coyne, Peter M. Malaguti, Constance L. Rudnick, Joseph E. Devlin, Andover, MA, for plaintiff.

Barbara W. Mather, L. Suzanne Forbis, Philadelphia, PA, H. Blair White, David T. Pritikin, William H. Baumgartner, Jr., David R. Stewart, Chicago, IL, for defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

DITTER, District Judge.

Before me is a case involving law school accreditation and alleged violations of federal antitrust law by four organizational defendants and 22 individual defendants. Plaintiff avers in its complaint that the American Bar Association ("ABA") monopolizes the accreditation process. Defendants, plaintiff asserts, have conspired to fix the salaries of law school faculties and administrators; restrict their output; raise law school tuitions; and foreclose from legal education people in lower socio-economic classes. Twenty-one¹ of the individual defendants have filed a motion to dismiss the claims against them for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue. I will grant their motion.

I. FACTS

For the purposes of the present jurisdictional motion the following allegations contained in the complaint will be accepted as true. Plaintiff, Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, Inc. ("MSL") is a non-profit corporation that operates a law school in Andover, Massachusetts. The law school opened its doors in 1988.

MSL asserts it endeavors to provide high quality, low-cost legal education to people who might otherwise be shut out of more traditional law schools. The law school prides itself on having a unique admissions procedure that encourages applicants from mid-life and from lower economic classes and on having a tuition that is currently $9,000 per year. MSL says it achieves its goals by policies and practices that it admits are in direct conflict with certain ABA accreditation criteria. MSL asserts that the ABA requires law schools to utilize the LSAT in admissions decisions, which MSL does not do. The ABA does not count adjunct faculty in computing required student-faculty ratios; MSL makes extensive use of adjunct professors, which keeps salary costs down, but does not allow MSL to reach the ABA-required ratio. The ABA criteria require a law school's library to have a certain number of hardbound volumes; MSL relies heavily on an electronic library.

MSL sought accreditation from the ABA. Such accreditation is crucial, MSL contends, because the vast majority of jurisdictions (41 states plus the District of Columbia) require that a prospective bar applicant be a graduate of an ABA-accredited law school before he or she can sit for that state's bar examination.² In 1993 the ABA denied MSL's application for accreditation.

MSL maintains that the ABA's accreditation criteria are anticompetitive and that the ABA has abused its monopoly power over accreditation. MSL asserts that defendants' actions have caused it to suffer competitive injury and loss of prestige. It avers that it has difficulty competing for students as a result of the ABA's denying accreditation, and it has suffered economic damage through decreased enrollments. In two counts, MSL claims that defendants have combined and conspired to organize and enforce a group boycott in restraint of trade, a violation of the Sherman Act, Section 1, and that defendants have conspired to monopolize the provision of law school training, the accreditation of law schools, and the licensing of lawyers, in violation of the Sherman Act, Section 2. 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2.

A variety of motions have been filed in this case. Here I will only address the motion of 21 individual defendants to dismiss the claims against them for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue.³ These defendants are, or have been, members of various ABA committees and organizations that participate in the accreditation process. James White, for example, is the ABA's consultant on legal education and is the chief administrative officer of the council of the ABA section of legal education and admissions to the Bar. The council promotes the ABA's accreditation standards and determines whether individual law schools comply. Other individual defendants are or were on the council, the ABA's accreditation committee, or the site review team that visited MSL as part of its accreditation application process.

II. PERSONAL JURISDICTION

Before this court can exercise personal jurisdiction over any of these individual defendants, there must be a constitutionally acceptable relationship between that defendant and the forum. Once a defendant challenges the exercise of personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff has the burden of proving with reasonable particularity that sufficient contacts to support jurisdiction exist between the defendant and the forum state. The plaintiff must establish a basis for either specific jurisdiction or general jurisdiction.

A. Personal Jurisdiction Based on Individual Defendants' Contacts With Pennsylvania

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4 allows a federal district court to exercise personal jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants to the extent allowed by the law of the state where the court is located. Pennsylvania has two statutes that confer jurisdiction over persons. 42 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. §§ 5301, 5322. General jurisdiction over an individual defendant is based on the individual's presence or domicile in Pennsylvania when served or on the individual's consent to jurisdiction. 42 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. § 5301(a)(1) (Purdon 1993). Specific jurisdiction over a person is based on the cause of action arising from the person's activities and contacts in Pennsylvania. 42 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. § 5322(a) (Purdon 1993).

Each of the individual defendants has stated in an affidavit that he or she was served outside of Pennsylvania, is not a resident⁴ of Pennsylvania, and has not consented to the exercise of personal jurisdiction by courts in Pennsylvania. (Def.Mot., exh. AU). Plaintiff has not offered evidence to the contrary. Therefore, I find that there is no basis for the exercise of general personal jurisdiction over the 21 individual defendants.

Moreover, I find that plaintiff has not shown that I may exercise specific personal jurisdiction over these defendants. The exercise of personal jurisdiction over a defendant must be consistent with due process. Pennsylvania provides for jurisdiction to the fullest extent allowed by the United States Constitution and to be based on the most minimum contact with Pennsylvania allowed by the United States Constitution. 42 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. § 5322(b). With regard to specific jurisdiction, due process is satisfied when a cause of action is related to or arises out of the defendant's purposeful contacts with the forum state so that the defendant could reasonably expect to be haled into court in that forum. See Provident Nat'l Bank v. California Fed. Sav. and Loan, 819 F.2d 434, 437 (citing World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 297, 100 S.Ct. 559, 567, 62 L.Ed.2d 490 (1980)).

It is not enough to warrant the exercise of personal jurisdiction that a defendant is being sued in a forum where he or she had some contact. Rather, a court must examine the relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation. Regency Oldsmobile, Inc. v. General Motors Corp., 685 F.Supp. 91, 94 (D.N.J.1988). A case from the Eighth Circuit is particularly instructive. In Health Care Equalization Committee, plaintiff, a chiropractic society, alleged antitrust violations by (among other defendants) the American College of Radiology. Health Care Equal. Comm. v. Iowa Medical Soc'y, 851 F.2d 1020, 1022 (8th Cir.1988). Plaintiff's allegations against the ACR focused on the ACR's adoption of a code of ethics that prohibited professional association with chiropractors. Id. at 1030. The district court granted the ACR's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Id. at 1022. In affirming the dismissal, the Eighth Circuit examined the relationship between the ACR's contacts with the forum state and the alleged cause of action against ACR. Id. at 1030. The ACR's contacts with the forum were limited to the less than one percent of ACR members who lived there and the mailings sent to those members. Id. In holding that there were insufficient contacts with the forum to warrant jurisdiction over the ACR, the Eighth Circuit said that the plaintiff had drawn no direct connection between the ACR's adoption of its code of ethics and its limited contact with the forum. Id.

In another case, a private educational institution alleged that two professional organizations and 25 individual defendants had conspired to limit the number of practicing orthodontists in violation of the antitrust laws. United States Dental Inst. v. American Ass'n of Orthodontists, 396 F.Supp. 565, 569 (N.D.Ill.1975). The complaint averred that the individual defendants furthered the conspiracy by adopting certain guidelines and acting to prevent the plaintiff from gaining state approval. Id. at 571. Nine of the individual defendants moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Id. at 569. The district court found that three of the individual defendants had been at meeting in the forum state at which the allegedly exclusionary guidelines were adopted and had been on the council that voted to approve the guidelines. Id. at 571. The court found that the plaintiffs cause of action, which arose from the exclusionary guidelines, was directly traceable to the meeting in the state at which they were adopted. Id. Therefore, the court held, the activities of the three voting defendants supported the exercise of personal jurisdiction. Id.

Here, the cause of action arises from the ABA's denial of accreditation to MSL. The ABA...