Swarts v. The Home Depot, Inc.
| Docket Number | 23-cv-0995-JST |
| Decision Date | 30 August 2023 |
| Parties | JASON SWARTS, Plaintiff, v. THE HOME DEPOT, INC., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of California |
Before the Court is Defendant The Home Depot, Inc.'s (“Home Depot”) motion to dismiss. ECF No. 23. The Court will deny the motion in part and grant it in part.
Home Depot is a home improvement retailer with more than 2,300 stores across North America. ECF No. 17 ¶ 18. It is incorporated in Delaware, and its principal place of business is in Georgia. ECF No. 23 at 14.
Home Depot's website includes an online “chat feature” which allows visitors to have conversations with customer service representatives. ECF No. 17 ¶¶ 17-18. Home Depot records those conversations without providing notice to customers. Id. ¶¶ 17, 25-26. Home Depot also contracts with LivePerson, which is a company that provides software to “analyz[e] the data and provid[e] Home Depot [with] customer data metrics related to each conversation.” Id. ¶ 4. During each conversation, “online traffic occurs between the customer's browser and several liveperson.net subdomains[.]” Id. ¶ 6. Additionally, Home Depot discloses customers' “private chat sessions” with Quantum Metric; “provides its customers' chats with adservice.google.com”; and sends “live chat session data” to Twilio. Id. ¶¶ 9-10.
Plaintiff Jason Swarts is a citizen and resident of California. Id. ¶ 17. On January 30, 2023, Plaintiff filed this putative Class Action Complaint against Home Depot in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleging that it has been “record[ing] electronic conversation[s] with Plaintiff without [his] knowledge or consent,” in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), Cal. Penal Code §§ 631, 632, and the Wiretap Act,[1] 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510 et seq. ECF No. 1 ¶ 2.
After this case was removed to federal court on March 3, 2023, see ECF No. 1, Home Depot moved to dismiss the original complaint. ECF No. 14. On April 25, 2023, Swarts filed a first amended complaint, alleging violations of the CIPA, Cal. Penal Code §§ 631, 632; the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510 et seq.; and California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL), Cal Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200, et seq. ECF No. 17.
Home Depot now moves to dismiss the amended complaint pursuant to Rules 12(b)(2) and 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. ECF No. 23. It argues that the Court lacks personal jurisdiction over it, and that Swarts's amended complaint fails to state a claim.
The Court has federal question jurisdiction over Plaintiff's Wiretap Act claim pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and supplemental jurisdiction over his state law claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a).
When a defendant objects to the Court's exercise of personal jurisdiction over it under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2), the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing that jurisdiction is proper. Boschetto v. Hansing, 539 F.3d 1011, 1015 (9th Cir. 2008). “Where, as here, a motion to dismiss is based on written materials rather than an evidentiary hearing, the plaintiff need only make a prima facie showing of jurisdictional facts.” Love v. Associated Newspapers, Ltd., 611 F.3d 601, 608 (9th Cir. 2010). To make this showing, “the plaintiff need only demonstrate facts that if true would support jurisdiction over the defendant.” Ballard v. Savage, 65 F.3d 1495, 1498 (9th Cir. 1995). The complaint's uncontroverted allegations must be taken as true, and “[c]onflicts between parties over statements contained in affidavits must be resolved in the plaintiff's favor.” Schwarzenegger v. Fred Martin Motor Co., 374 F.3d 797, 800 (9th Cir. 2004).
Federal courts recognize two types of personal jurisdiction over a defendant: general and specific. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct. of California, San Francisco Cnty., 582 U.S. 255, 262 (2017) (citation omitted). “A court with general jurisdiction may hear any claim against that defendant, even if all the incidents underlying the claim occurred in a different [s]tate.” Id. (emphasis and citation omitted). General jurisdiction arises “when [the defendant's] affiliations with the [s]tate are so ‘continuous and systematic' as to render them essentially at home in the forum [s]tate.” Id. (quoting Int'l Shoe v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 317 (1945)). Although general jurisdiction might be found elsewhere in an “exceptional case,” a corporation is usually “at home” only in its place of incorporation and its principal place of business. Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S.Ct. 1017, 1024 (2021).
By contrast, specific jurisdiction arises when a defendant's contacts with the forum give rise to the claim in question. See Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 188 (2014). “In other words, there must be ‘an affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy, principally, [an] activity or an occurrence that takes place in the forum [s]tate and is therefore subject to the State's regulation.'” Id. (quoting Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915, 919 (2011)).
“The general rule is that personal jurisdiction over a defendant is proper if it is permitted by a long-arm statute and if the exercise of that jurisdiction does not violate federal due process.” Pebble Beach Co. v. Caddy, 453 F.3d 1151, 1154-55 (9th Cir. 2006) (citing Fireman's Fund Ins. Co. v. Nat. Bank of Coops., 103 F.3d 888, 893 (9th Cir. 1996)). “Where, as here, no federal statute authorizes personal jurisdiction, the district court applies the law of the state in which the court sits.” Mavrix Photo, Inc. v. Brand Techs., Inc., 647 F.3d 1218, 1223 (9th Cir. 2011).
Because California's long-arm jurisdictional statute authorizes jurisdiction to the fullest extent permitted by the Constitution, see Cal. Code Civ. P. § 410.10, the central question is whether the defendant has “at least ‘minimum contacts' with [California] such that the exercise of jurisdiction ‘does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.'” The Ninth Circuit has established a three-part inquiry, referred to as the minimum contacts test, to determine whether a court has specific personal jurisdiction over a defendant:
Schwarzenegger, 374 F.3d at 802. “The plaintiff bears the burden of satisfying the first two prongs of the test.” Id. If the plaintiff does so, “the burden then shifts to the defendant to ‘present a compelling case' that the exercise of jurisdiction would not be reasonable.” Id. (quoting Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 476-78 (1985)).
To survive a motion to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), a complaint must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(a)(2). Dismissal “is appropriate only where the complaint lacks a cognizable legal theory or sufficient facts to support a cognizable legal theory.” Mendiondo v. Centinela Hosp. Med. Ctr., 521 F.3d 1097, 1104 (9th Cir. 2008). “[A] complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to ‘state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.'” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007)). Factual allegations need not be detailed, but facts must be “enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555.
“A claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. While this standard is not “akin to a ‘probability requirement,' . . . it asks for more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556). “Where a complaint pleads facts that are ‘merely consistent with' a defendant's liability, it ‘stops short of the line between possibility and plausibility of entitlement to relief.'” Id. (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557). In determining whether a plaintiff has met the plausibility requirement, a court must “accept all factual allegations in the complaint as true and construe the pleadings in the light most favorable” to the plaintiff. Knievel v. ESPN, 393 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th Cir. 2005). A plaintiff may “plead[] facts alleged upon information and belief where the facts are peculiarly within the possession and control of the defendant or where the belief is based on factual information that makes the inference of culpability plausible.” Soo Park v. Thompson, 851 F.3d 910, 928 (9th Cir. 2017) (quoting Arista Records, LLC v. Doe 3, 603 F.3d 110, 120 (2d Cir. 2010)).
Home Depot argues that the Court lacks general jurisdiction because Home Depot neither is incorporated in, nor maintains its headquarters in, California, and this is not an “exceptional case.” ECF No. 23 at 14-15. Plaintiff does not respond to this argument, and the Court finds that it does not have general...
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