Orleans v. Apex Tool Group, LLC

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
James Orleans
v.
Apex Tool Group, LLC
& Paulo Products Co.
Case No. 1:25-cv-00203-JL-TSM
Opinion No. 2026 DNH 050
MEMORANDUM ORDER
The motion to dismiss this product liability case involves whether this court may
exercise specific personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state subcontractor based solely on
its alleged out-of-forum manufacturing work on a product that later entered New
Hampshire through a third party’s distribution chain. The case arises out of a serious
hand injury sustained by New Hampshire resident James Orleans while using a pair of
“Wiss Snips.” He alleges that the tool was defectively designed and manufactured and
asserts claims against multiple entities in the distribution chain, including Paulo Products,
a Missouri-based company that performed heat-treatment services on the tool in
Tennessee. Paulo Products moves to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction under Fed.
R. Civ. P. 12(b)(2), arguing that neither general nor specific personal jurisdiction can be
exercised over it in New Hampshire. Orleans objects and, in the alternative, requests
leave to conduct jurisdictional discovery on the question of general jurisdiction.
This court has subject-matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a) (diversity).
After reviewing the parties’ submissions and hearing oral argument, the court grants the
motion. Orleans has not shown that Paulo Products has the minimum contacts with New
Hampshire required for the exercise of personal jurisdiction consistent with the Due
Process Clause. Specifically, he has failed to establish that Paulo Products purposefully
availed itself of the privilege of conducting activities in this state. Because neither
general nor specific personal jurisdiction lies here, and jurisdictional discovery would not
alter that conclusion, the court dismisses all claims against Paulo Products from this
action.
I. Legal standards
When personal jurisdiction is challenged under Rule 12(b)(2), “[t]he burden of
providing that personal jurisdiction may be exercised in the forum state lies squarely with
the plaintiff.” Chen v. United States Sports Acad., 956 F.3d 45, 54 (1st Cir. 2020).
Where, as here, the parties agree that the court should consider the question of personal
jurisdiction “based on the prima facie record,” it “must ask whether the plaintiff has
proffered evidence which, taken at face value, suffices to show all facts essential to
personal jurisdiction.” Id. (citations and alterations omitted). When deciding a motion to
dismiss using the prima facie approach, the court considers the “relevant facts from the
pleadings and whatever supplemental filings (such as affidavits) are contained in the
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record, giving credence to the plaintiff's version of genuinely contested facts,” but does
not “credit conclusory allegations or draw farfetched inferences.” Rosenthal v.
Bloomingdales.com, LLC, 101 F.4th 90, 94 (1st Cir. 2024) (citations omitted).
II. Background
The product at the center of this litigation—“Wiss Snips”—is a hand tool
manufactured by Apex Tool Group, LLC.1 Apex is a Maryland-headquartered company.2
Plaintiff James Orleans, a New Hampshire resident, purchased the subject Wiss Snips at a
local New Hampshire Home Depot.3 In November 2022, Orleans was using the Wiss
Snips when its steel handle snapped unexpectedly, causing him to suffer a permanent
injury to his right hand.4
Apex contracts with Paulo Products, a domestic Missouri corporation
headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, as part of the Wiss Snips manufacturing process.5
Specifically, Apex sends Wiss Snips to Paulo Products to be thermally treated.6 After
thermal treatment is completed, Paulo Products returns the Wiss Snips to Apex for
distribution and sale.7 In this case, the Wiss Snips were sent to a Paulo Products facility
in Murfreesboro, Tennessee facility, then returned to Apex.8 Apex subsequently delivered
the tool to the Home Depot where Orleans purchased it in New Hampshire.9 Paulo
Products is not registered to do business in New Hampshire and maintains no office,
address, registered agent for service, telephone number, bank account, or employees in
the state.10
III. Analysis
When, as here, a district court is exercising diversity jurisdiction, assessing
whether personal jurisdiction exists with respect to a non-resident defendant requires the
court to act as the “functional equivalent of a state court sitting in the forum state.”
Baskin-Robbins Franchising LLC v. Alpenrose Dairy, Inc., 825 F.3d 28, 34 (1st Cir.
2016). Accordingly, “to meet [his] ultimate burden to establish personal jurisdiction over
[Paulo Products] in New Hampshire,” Orleans “must satisfy the requirements of both
New Hampshire’s long-arm statute -- which defines the scope of personal jurisdiction
over a defendant in that state’s courts -- and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Stokinger v. Armslist, LLC, 166 F.4th 229, 233
(1st Cir. 2026). Because “New Hampshire’s long-arm statute authorizes the exercise of
personal jurisdiction ... to the extent permissible under the federal Due Process clause,”
however, the court’s inquiry collapses into the single question of whether Orleans can
1 Am. Compl. (doc. no. 25) ¶ 2.
2 Id.
3 Id. ¶¶ 6, 8.
4 Id. ¶ 8.
5 Id. ¶ 3.
6 Decl. of Steven R. Poss (“Poss Decl.”) (doc. no. 29-2) ¶ 12.
7 Id. ¶¶ 12-13.
8 Id. ¶¶ 2, 6.
9 Am. Compl. (doc. no. 25) ¶ 6.
10 Poss. Decl. (doc. no. 29-2) ¶¶ 3, 5, 7-11.
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show that the exercise of jurisdiction over Paulo Products would comport with the
requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cappello v. Rest. Depot, LLC, 89 F.4th 238,
243 (1st Cir. 2023) (quoting In re Reddam, 170 N.H. 590, 596 (2018) (alterations
omitted)); see NH RSA 510:4, I.
“To make that showing, [Orleans] must establish that [Paulo Products] had ‘certain
minimum contacts with [New Hampshire] such that the maintenance of the suit does not
offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’” Stokinger, 166 F.4th at
233 (quoting Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945)). “Those contacts
may be marshalled to support a theory of either general or specific jurisdiction.” Id.
Here, Orleans contends that there is sufficient evidence in the prima facie record to
establish specific jurisdiction and, should the court disagree, requests leave to conduct
jurisdictional discovery on the question of general jurisdiction. The court considers these
arguments in turn.
A. Specific jurisdiction
Specific personal jurisdiction exists where the “case relates sufficiently to, or
arises from, a significant subset of contacts between the defendant and the forum.”
Phillips Exeter Acad. v. Howard Phillips Fund, 196 F.3d 284, 288 (1st Cir. 1999). To
establish specific jurisdiction, the plaintiff must satisfy each prong of the specific-
jurisdiction test:
(1) their claim directly arises out of or relates to the
defendant's forum-state activities; (2) the defendant's contacts
with the forum state represent a purposeful availment of the
privilege of conducting activities in that state, thus invoking
the benefits and protections of that state's laws and rendering
the defendant's involuntary presence in that state's courts
foreseeable; and (3) the exercise of jurisdiction is ultimately
reasonable.
Scottsdale Cap. Advisors Corp. v. The Deal, LLC, 887 F.3d 17, 20 (1st Cir. 2018).
Because Orleans’s showing falters at the purposeful-availment prong, the court proceeds
directly to that inquiry without addressing the relatedness requirement.
Purposeful availment. “The purposeful-availment requirement ensures that a
defendant’s contacts with the forum state… show that the defendant ‘deliberately
target[ed] its behavior toward the society or economy of [the] forum [such that] the forum
should have the power to subject the defendant to judgment regarding that behavior.’”
Stokinger, 166 F.4th 234 (quoting Baskin-Robbins, 825 F.3d at 36). The analysis under
this prong focuses on the defendant’s intentions, with “voluntariness and foreseeability”
serving as the "cornerstones” of the inquiry. Id. (citation omitted).
Orleans contends that the purposeful-availment prong is satisfied based on a
“stream of commerce” theory, under which a manufacturer may, in some circumstances,
be subject to jurisdiction “in a forum in which its products are sold, even if the products
were sold indirectly through importers or distributors with independent sales and
marketing schemes.” Papafagos v. Fiat Auto, S.p.A., 568 F. Supp. 692, 695 (D.N.H.
1983) (quoting DeJames v. Magnificence Carriers, Inc., 654 F.2d 280, 285 (3d Cir.), cert.
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denied, 454 U.S. 1085 (1981)). Specifically, he argues that “the Court should find that []
Paulo [Products] purposefully availed itself of the laws of New Hampshire by providing
manufacturing services to Defendant Apex, who in turn sold its products in New
Hampshire.”11
That argument is unpersuasive. To start, Orleans’s principal authority on
purposeful availment—Papafagos v. Fiat Auto, S.p.A.—is no longer persuasive. Five
years after Papafagos was decided, the Supreme Court split 4-4-1 over the proper
interpretation of the stream-of-commerce theory, with four of the justices adopting a
narrower view of the doctrine under which “[t]he placement of a product into the stream
of commerce, without more, is not an act of the defendant purposefully directed toward
the forum State.” Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Superior Ct. of California, Solano Cnty., 480
U.S. 102, 112 (O'Connor, J., plurality). Since then, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has
emphasized that “the mere placement of a product into the stream of commerce with the
awareness that it could end up in a forum state, without more, is not enough to show
purposeful availment.” Rodríguez-Rivera v. Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., 43
F.4th 150, 163 (1st Cir. 2022) (citing Asahi, 480 U.S. at 112). Instead, the defendant must
engage in “additional conduct” indicating an intent to serve the forum, such as targeting
the forum’s market, designing the product for that market, or otherwise deliberately
cultivating a business presence there. Id.
Orleans makes no such showing here. As discussed above, any connection
between Product Products and New Hampshire arises solely from Apex’s independent
decision to distribute the finished products in the state. Paulo Product’s role was limited:
it contracted with Apex, performed heat treatment in Tennessee, and returned the treated
goods to Apex; it did not sell, market, or solicit business in New Hampshire, and its
involvement ended upon delivery. In other words, any forum contact resulted from “the
‘unilateral activity of another party or a third person” rather than Paulo Products’ own
purposeful conduct. Id. (quoting Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 475
(1985)).12 The purposeful availment prong is accordingly not satisfied under these
circumstances.
Reasonableness. Because Plaintiff has failed to satisfy the second prong of the
specific jurisdiction test, the court need not decide whether the exercise of jurisdiction
over Paulo Products is reasonable in light of the five “gestalt factors.” See Sawtelle v.
Farrell, 70 F.3d 1381, 1394 (1st Cir. 1995) (courts need not reach reasonableness inquiry
if other factors are not met); United Elec. Radio & Mach. Workers of Am. (UE) v. 163
11 Obj. to Mot. to Dismiss (doc. no. 34-1) at 8-9.
12 The court notes that Orleans’s reliance on a more recent decision—D’Jamoos v. Atlas Aircraft
Center, Inc., 669 F. Supp. 2d 167 (D.N.H. 2009)—is similarly unavailing. In D’Jamoos, the
court found specific jurisdiction over Pilatus Aircraft only because Pilatus had directly sold more
than 300 maintenance manuals and service bulletins to a New Hampshire entity (Atlas) on a
monthly basis over a period of years, with full knowledge that Atlas was using those documents
in New Hampshire. Id. at 172. That constituted a direct, voluntary, and ongoing commercial
relationship with a New Hampshire business. Paulo Products has no such relationship with any
New Hampshire entity.
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Pleasant St. Corp., 987 F.2d 39, 44 n.11 (1st Cir. 1993) (“The Gestalt factors come into
play only if the first two segments of the test for specific jurisdiction have been
fulfilled.”).13
B. Jurisdictional discovery
Having found the prima facie record insufficient to establish specific jurisdiction,
the court turns to Orleans’s argument that he should be afforded the opportunity to
conduct discovery into the scope of Paulo Products’ contacts with New Hampshire “to
determine whether the court may exercise general jurisdiction over Paulo [Products].”14
Since the Supreme Court's decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117
(2014), “the lodestar of the [general jurisdiction] inquiry is whether the corporation’s
general business contacts with the forum are sufficiently continuous and systematic ‘as to
render [it] essentially at home in the forum State.’” Chen, 956 F.3d at 57 (quoting
Daimler, 571 U.S. at 119)). Accordingly, general personal jurisdiction over a corporate
defendant is typically only exercised in “its state of incorporation and the state that
houses its principal place of business.” Id. (citing BNSF Ry. Co. v. Tyrrell, 581 U.S. 402,
413 (2017)). Here, Orleans seeks jurisdictional discovery on a theory that Paulo Products
“could very well maintain continuous and systematic business connections in [New
Hampshire] that are independent of this litigation.”15 In support of this request, he points
to statements on Paulo Products’ website describing its nationwide operations, including
six strategically located facilities across North America, a strategy to expand market
share through national sales managers, and the existence of a sales manager responsible
for a broad northern United States territory that may encompass New Hampshire.16
While “a diligent plaintiff who sues an out-of-state corporation… may well be
entitled to a modicum of jurisdictional discovery,” he must first make out “a colorable
case for the existence of in personam jurisdiction.” Negron-Torres v. Verizon Commc’ns,
Inc., 478 F.3d 19, 27 (1st Cir. 2007). “In addition to making a colorable claim, it is also
incumbent upon the plaintiff to present facts to the court which show why jurisdiction
would be found if discovery were permitted.” Id. (citation omitted).
Orleans has not made out a colorable case for personal jurisdiction over Paulo
Products (as is apparent from his failure to allege any New Hampshire-based or New
Hampshire-related conduct whatsoever). For that reason alone, he is not entitled to
13 These factors are “(1) the defendant's burden of appearing; (2) the forum state's interest in
adjudicating the dispute; (3) the plaintiff's interest in obtaining convenient and effective relief;
(4) the judicial system’s interest in obtaining the most effective resolution of the controversy; and
(5) the common interests of all sovereigns in promoting substantive social policies.” Sawtelle,
70 F.3d at 1394 (citation omitted).
14 Opp. to Mot. to Dismiss (doc. no. 34-1) at 11.
15 Opp. to Mot. to Dismiss (doc. no. 34-1) at 12. Orleans confirmed at oral argument that he
seeks jurisdictional discovery focused on the general jurisdiction inquiry. Orleans has not cited
any cases in which a court granted jurisdictional discovery focused on a corporation’s general
business contacts with a forum, which is information that is ordinarily publicly available.
16 Id. at 12 n.2. Orleans did not identify any additional bases for his jurisdictional discovery
request at oral argument.
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jurisdictional discovery. See United States v. Swiss Am. Bank, Ltd., 274 F.3d 610, 626
(1st Cir. 2001) (ruling that a request for jurisdictional discovery was properly denied
where plaintiff's “relatedness showing was unconvincing”). Even if he had, the First
Circuit Court of Appeals has repeatedly held that a proffer consisting of generalized
allegations untethered to meaningful forum contacts is insufficient to show that
jurisdiction would be found if discovery were permitted. See, e.g., Stokinger, 166 F.4th at
244-45 (affirming denial of request for jurisdictional discovery made in opposition to
motion to dismiss where the plaintiff failed to present a non-speculative, forum-specific
basis for jurisdiction); Crocker v. Hilton Int’l Barb., Ltd., 976 F.2d 797, 801 (1st Cir.
1992) (affirming denial of jurisdictional discovery where appellants sought information,
irrelevant to forum contacts, on solicitation of business and the provision of goods or
services outside of the forum). Such is the case here, where Orleans’s proffered basis for
jurisdictional discovery describes Paulo Products’ nationwide operations but identifies no
facts meaningfully tying those operations to New Hampshire.
Because Orleans has not identified any facts that would allow this court to
exercise general jurisdiction under Daimler and First Circuit precedent, his request for
jurisdictional discovery is denied.
IV. Conclusion
For the reasons stated, Paulo Products’ motion to dismiss is GRANTED.
SO ORDERED.
Joseph N. Laplante
United States District Judge
Dated: May 4, 2026
Cc: Counsel of record
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