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Comment by socialtistics | Hacker News Reader

Sadly you can arbitrarily declare where someone can sue you. In legal terms it is called a "forum-selection clause" and is common in almost every contract you will read here in the US. The party designates what court will hear any dispute regarding the nonperformance of the contract. Google does have a forum-selection clause in their terms of service for Google Checkout so to sue for breach of contract she would have to file in the court stated in the terms of service for Google.

One option would be for her to file with a local court and seek jurisdiction. This would be time consuming and costly though. I am not sure exactly how this would work with her being in the UK.

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Wow, crazy ass law. I learned something today about my southern neighbours.

But the courts would decide the validity of the request. A single person suing a multi-national billion dollar corporation would have a good case.

Wikipedia has some more info, including certain states that favour the plaintiff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_non_conveniens#United_Sta...

Yeah,it is a little crazy, but kind of makes sense if you think about it when it comes to preventing frivolous lawsuits.

There are ways around it, and as you pointed out you can file locally and try to convince the local court that i should take jurisdiction over the case. But this would cost you money and time. Plus, you would have an uphill battle trying to convince a court to overturn a clause you agreed to in the first place.

While you cannot always do it, at least in the states, if you are negotiating a contract for your business try to get the other party to agree to dual jurisdiction. Basically stating that your local court or their local court can have jurisdiction over the contract. Some parties will agree outright, others will want it to say something like if they sue you it has to be in your court, but if you sue them it has to be in their court.

It's not that crazy if you think about it. We have 50 different sets of state contract law and precedence to deal with (unlike your 13 superior courts to watch) and a larger amount of interstate commerce and contracts to be handled. Compounding the problem is that fact that state laws regarding contracts can vary quite widely. While some companies may wish to restrict jurisdiction to states that have a pro-business bias this is less of a factor than you might think (companies sue each other far more often than consumers sue companies) and what most companies are looking for is a single standard to use for the contract. No one wants to learn the hard way that some state changed a law six months ago which completely hoses you for liability or contract enforcement and if a contract could not specify a jurisdiction then companies would be forced to stay up to date on new legal precedents and new legislative efforts in all fifty states.

You can try to change the jurisdiction, but it is hard to do this for a very specific reason.

You can have a contract that has a "forum-selection clause" but it's far less binding that people assume. For example if there was fraud or duress or undue influence involved in the signing of the contract then the entire contract can be worthless including the "forum-selection clause".

Very true. That is definitely a way around the forum-selection clause and a good way to fight a contract dispute.

As I posted elsewhere, that's just wrong.

FORUM SELECTION CLAUSES ARE NOT BINDING ABSENT A SIGNED WRITTEN CONTRACT. EVEN WITH A CONTRACT, ALMOST NO COURT IN THE US WILL HONOR A FORUM SELECTION CLAUSE BETWEEN A CONSUMER AND A CORPORATION.

Think about it: if forum selection clauses did have legal effect (between consumers and corporations), you wouldn't be able to sue most companies unless you were willing to go to Delaware (where roughly 90% of naitonal US corps are headquartered). The reason we have lawsuits everywhere is precisely b/c you can file anywhere, even despite a forum selection clause.

ONLY BUSINESSES NEED TO WORRY ABOUT FORUM SELECTION CLAUSES.

Choice of law clauses are different.

That statement is wrong. Forum selection clauses are binding absent a signed written contract. For example, one of the more famous cases setting precedent for forum selection clauses involved Carnival Cruise Lines. In that case a passenger injured on a cruise attempted to sue Carnival in the passenger's local jurisdiction. Carnival countered that because there was a forum-selection clause in the contract printed on the back of the passenger's ticket that the passenger should be forced to sue Carnival in Florida. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court which ruled that the forum-selection clause on Carnival's ticket was fair and reasonable and enforceable against the passenger. Check out Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v Shute 499 US 595, 111 S.Ct122 (1991) for details on this exact case.

Now I am by no means saying that forum-selection clauses are an end all to potential contract lawsuits (key here being contract disputes and not just any lawsuit between a plaintiff and defendent corporation). There are ways to fight the forum-selection part, but you must be prepared to fight it and pay the legal expenses involved. Sometimes it is a matter of weighing the cost versus the outcome sadly and that is why corporations end up avoiding the lawsuits in contract disputes.

Check the case again: this case is only mandatory precedent for ADMIRALTY cases. While strongly persuasive precedent, b/c it is SCOTUS, it has not been followed in the state courts.

Please don't use all uppercase.

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