Jurisdiction Question in Contractor Court Case

There's a very interesting court case currently making its way through the courts. The case is Baragona v. Kuwait & Gulf Link Transport Co. On his way to a base in Kuwait, an Army Lt. was killed in a vehicular accident involving a trucking contractor. An Army investigation of the accident determined that the KGL driver's negligence caused the accident and Baragona's death, according to court records in the case.[ref] His parents sued the contractor, and won. Now the contractor is appealing the case on jurisdictional grounds. I think it's worth keeping an eye on.

Court: Contractor owes $5 million to U.S. soldier’s family CNN, November 27, 2007 Army Lt. Col. Dominic “Rocky” Baragona was just an hour away from a U.S. base in Kuwait — ultimately headed home to the United States — when a tractor-trailer operated by Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company slammed into his Humvee on May 19, 2003, killing him instantly. Baragona, a West Point graduate, was 42 years old and the highest-ranking soldier to have died in the war at the time. His family filed a wrongful death suit against KGL. Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia sided with the family, holding the Kuwait company negligent in Baragona’s death for failing to provide safe passage on the three-lane road where the accident occurred. A key issue in the judge’s decision was whether a U.S. court had jurisdiction over a foreign contractor and whether there was a legal basis to find it negligent.

The company is fighting the verdict.

Kuwait Contractor Fights $4.9 Million Ga. Judgment on Jurisdictional Grounds By R. Robin McDonald, Fulton County Daily Report, February 25, 2008 At the outset of the litigation, Duffey had addressed the jurisdiction issue, requiring that the plaintiffs lawyers show cause as to why the case should be litigated here. In court briefs, Perles has argued that about $800 million in Army contracts with KGL that were administered through Fort McPherson for transport and cargo services for the Third U.S. Army, which is based here, constituted "a very significant interaction with the forum." Perles argued that a 2005 opinion of the Supreme Court of Georgia, Innovative Clinical & Consulting Services v. First National Bank of Ames, Iowa, 279 Ga. 672, expanded the reach of the Georgia courts outside the state. In that opinion, the court ruled that the Georgia courts have "unlimited authority to exercise personal jurisdiction over any nonresident who transacts any business" in Georgia. In addition, Perles argued, KGL's contracts with the Army specified that if KGL were determined to have engaged in any kind of contract or procurement fraud, criminal charges would be prosecuted in federal court in Georgia's Northern District in Atlanta. KGL, Perles told the Daily Report in December, "had the expectation that if anything went wrong, they could well be hauled into court here."