BRANDON BRISKIN V. SHOPIFY, INC., ET AL, No. 22-15815 (9th Cir. 2023)
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Plaintiff is a resident of California. While present in California, Plaintiff used his iPhone’s Safari browser to navigate to the website of California-based retailer IABMFG to purchase fitness apparel. Although Plaintiff claims he did not know it at the time, IABMFG’s website used software and code from Shopify, Inc. to process customer orders and payments. Shopify, Inc. is a Canadian corporation with its headquarters in Ottawa, Canada. Plaintiff filed a putative class action lawsuit in California alleging that Shopify violated various California privacy and unfair competition laws because it deliberately concealed its involvement in consumer transactions. The district court agreed, dismissing the second amended complaint without leave to amend. Plaintiff timely appealed.
The Ninth Circuit affirmed. For specific jurisdiction to exist over Shopify, Plaintiff’s claim must arise out of or relate to Shopify’s forum-related activities. The panel held that there was no causal relationship between Shopify’s broader business contacts in California and Plaintiff’s claims because these contacts did not cause Plaintiff’s harm. Nor did Plaintiff’s claims “relate to” Shopify’s broader business activities in California outside of its extraction and retention of plaintiff’s data. Because there was an insufficient relationship between plaintiff's claims and Shopify’s broader business contacts in California, the activities relevant to the specific jurisdiction analysis were those that caused Plaintiff’s injuries: Shopify’s collection, retention, and use of consumer data obtained from persons who made online purchases while in California. The panel held that Shopify, which provides nationwide web-based payment processing services to online merchants, did not expressly aim its conduct toward California.
Court Description: Specific Jurisdiction. The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal, due to lack of specific personal jurisdiction over the defendants, of a putative class action alleging that Shopify, Inc. violated various California privacy and unfair competition laws because it deliberately concealed its involvement in certain consumer transactions.
Defendants offer a web-based payment processing platform to merchants nationwide. When processing payments, defendants obtain the personal information of those merchants’ customers.
For specific jurisdiction to exist over Shopify, plaintiff’s claim must arise out of or relate to Shopify’s forum-related activities. The panel held that there was no causal relationship between Shopify’s broader business contacts in California and plaintiff’s claims because these contacts did not cause plaintiff’s harm. Nor did plaintiff’s claims “relate to” Shopify’s broader business activities in California outside of its extraction and retention of plaintiff’s data.
Because there was an insufficient relationship between plaintiff's claims and Shopify’s broader business contacts in California, the activities relevant to the specific jurisdiction analysis were those that caused plaintiff’s injuries: Shopify’s collection, retention, and use of consumer data obtained from persons who made online purchases while in California.
The panel held that Shopify, which provides nationwide web-based payment processing services to online merchants, did not expressly aim its conduct toward California. The panel held that plaintiff’s California connection—plaintiff resides in California and was physically located in California when he used Shopify’s e-commerce payment system—did not matter to the analysis of whether Shopify expressly aimed its activities toward California. When analyzing whether a court has personal jurisdiction over a web-based payment processor in a suit alleging the unlawful extraction, retention, and sharing of consumer data, the legal framework and principles that should be brought to bear are those found in the court’s personal jurisdiction cases involving interactive websites. Applying those principles to this case, the panel held that Shopify did not expressly aim its suit- related conduct toward California.
The panel held that the district court’s effective denial of plaintiff’s request for jurisdictional discovery of Shopify was not an abuse of discretion.
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