2018 2018: Peltz-Steele Quoted on Jurisdiction in Mass. Defamation Case

Professor Richard J. Peltz-Steele was quoted in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly (MLW) about a superior court decision denying personal jurisdiction in a defamation case

UMass Law Professor Richard J. Peltz-Steele was quoted in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly (MLW) about a superior court decision denying personal jurisdiction in a defamation case.

The MLW article (subscription), by Eric T. Berkman, reported the denial of jurisdiction in Superior Court under the state long-arm statute. The Massachusetts statute is specific in its terms and subtly narrower than the maximum permissible personal jurisdiction of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the case, SCVNGR, Inc. v. Punchh, Inc., a Boston-based software maker accused an out-of-state competitor of defamation. Judge Mitchell H. Kaplan ruled that the out-of-state defendant’s business relationships with Massachusetts enterprises were too attenuated to support jurisdiction.

Professor Peltz-Steele was quoted on the problem of jurisdiction in the age of online business transactions. “Even if [plaintiff’s company] LevelUp has a physical base in Boston, it’s really two entities doing business in the internet ether,” Peltz-Steele said. The court’s focus on the defendant’s contact with Massachusetts runs contrary to an emerging international focus on the harm to the plaintiff, he told the MLW.

The SCVNGR case appeared in Superior Court after remand from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). The SJC faulted the lower court’s first take on the case for analyzing constitutional due process without first construing the state long-arm statute. Professor Peltz-Steele wrote about SCVNGR in the SJC on his blog, The Savory Tort, last year. At UMass Law, Professor Peltz-Steele teaches torts and media-law related topics, including defamation and privacy.