Top Law Schools

4(k)(1)(A)

(1) In General. Serving a summons or filing a waiver of service establishes personal jurisdiction over a defendant:

(A) who is subject to the jurisdiction of a court of general jurisdiction in the state where the district court is located;

I basically have no idea what this means. It is basically a codification of Burham/Pennoyer where if you serve somebody in the state you have personal jurisdiction over them?



Edit: Got this from an outline: Authorizes exercise of PJ by a federal court only to the extent a state court where the summons happens could exercise jurisdiction under its long-arm statute

I dont understand how 4k1A translates into something about state court summons...

4k1A basically says that fed court PJ must look to the long arm statute of the state in which the fed court is in. You always have to serve a summons on someone even if you're not asserting transient jx (Burnham/Pennoyer are transient jx). But most state long arm statutes codify transient jx (serving someone with summons while they are in the state, see, e.g., IL Long Arm 5/2-209b1).