SCOVT affirms ruling that Vermont has personal jurisdiction over Meta for consumer protection claims brought by State .

State v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 2025 VT 51 [8/29/2025]

 CARROLL, J.   This interlocutory appeal requires us to evaluate the constitutionality of a Vermont court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants who allegedly violated the Vermont Consumer Protection Act (VCPA) through their design and operation of an online application.  We affirm. 

 

Broadly, the complaint alleges Meta intentionally designed Instagram to be addictive to teens, that Meta did so to increase advertisement revenue despite knowing the resulting negative effects on teens, and that Meta failed to take meaningful action to mitigate these harms while both actively minimizing and withholding its relevant internal research findings to maintain teens’ engagement with the application.  

Meta moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction under Vermont Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2).  The court denied Meta’s motion on the ground that Vermont has specific jurisdiction over Meta for these claims. The court granted permission to appeal its ruling on personal jurisdiction, and we accepted the appeal of this issue.  See V.R.A.P. 5(b)(1), (6).  

 

On appeal, Meta maintains that Vermont lacks specific personal jurisdiction over Meta and that the State’s complaint must be dismissed.  Specifically, Meta argues that specific personal jurisdiction is lacking because Meta’s contacts with Vermont were not purposefully directed at Vermont, none of the misrepresentations were made in or aimed at Vermont, and that the State’s claims do not arise out of or relate to any of the alleged connections Meta has with Vermont.  

 

We first address whether, taking the facts in the State’s complaint as true and considering them in the light most favorable to the State, there is a basis to demonstrate that Meta has sufficient minimum contacts with Vermont.

Here, the State is not relying solely on Instagram’s accessibility in Vermont.  Rather, Meta has purposefully availed itself of the Vermont market, including studying Vermont teen users to increase engagement with the application and engaging with Vermont businesses to sell targeted advertising space to target Vermonters.  See Burger King Corp., 471 U.S. at 473 (“[A] forum legitimately may exercise personal jurisdiction over a nonresident who ‘purposefully directs’ [its] activities toward forum residents.”).

 

Having concluded that the complaint provides enough facts to demonstrate that Meta has sufficient minimum contacts with Vermont, we address whether the claims arise out of or relate to Meta’s connections to Vermont.

Here, the State’s claims are related to Meta’s Vermont contacts.  The State asserts that Meta has cultivated and purposefully availed itself of the Vermont market for social media and that the use of Meta’s product and subsequent misrepresentations about such use has caused injury to Vermonters.   Meta argues that the State’s claims are not related to its contacts with Vermont because the State is not claiming that viewing advertisements is causing Vermonters to be addicted to Instagram. However, the relatedness requirement does not demand such a strict causal showing. While there may not be a direct causal relationship between the advertisements and the State’s claim, the State is claiming that Meta designed Instagram in a way to increase Vermont user engagement.  Thus, there is a sufficient relationship between the State’s claims and Meta’s connections to Vermont

 

Having established that Meta has minimum contacts with Vermont and those contacts relate to this cause of action, “these contacts may be considered in light of other factors to determine whether the assertion of personal jurisdiction would comport with fair play and substantial justice.”  Atl. Richfield Co., 2016 VT 22, ¶ 27 Meta’s only argument that asserting jurisdiction over it in this case would be unreasonable is that it “would blur the distinction between general and specific jurisdiction, subjecting Meta to personal jurisdiction in every forum in the country.”   Surely, a company cannot avoid jurisdiction in one state just because it avails itself of another, or many others, in the same way.  The State has undoubtedly met its burden of demonstrating sufficient facts to support jurisdiction in this case.

 

In sum, the civil division did not err in concluding that the allegations in the State’s complaint support a prima facie case for specific jurisdiction over Meta in Vermont.  Accordingly, we affirm the court’s decision to deny Meta’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

 

Affirmed.  

Divided Court reverses dismissal on grounds of lack of personal jurisdiction of breach of warranty action against out-of-state horse sellers whose sole contact with state was national advertising.

Dall v. Kaylor, 163 Vt. 274 (1995) 

MORSE, Justice. Plaintiff Dall appeals the trial court's dismissal of her claim for lack of personal jurisdiction. Dall, a Vermont resident, brought suit in Rutland Superior Court against Maryland defendants for breach of warranty arising from the purchase of a Hanoverian horse. Defendant Baron, a Maryland resident and owner of the horse, hired defendants Kaylor and Westphalian Pride Farm to sell it. Defendant Kaylor, d/b/a Westphalian Pride Farm, is a horse breeder and trainer in Maryland. Defendant Westphalian Pride Farm holds itself out as a breeder and developer of “world-class” Hanoverian horses. The horse sustained injuries during its trip to Vermont. A veterinarian's treatment of these injuries led to the discovery that the horse suffered from congenital and chronic bone disease in his rear legs. The sole issue is whether defendants' contacts with Vermont were sufficient to confer personal jurisdiction in Vermont. The trial court granted defendants' motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. We reverse.

Defendants here were in the business of selling horses; they held themselves out as “breeder[s] and developers of world class registered Hanoverians.” Defendants initiated the resulting business transaction by advertising, more than one hundred times, in a national market that included Vermont.

It is hardly unfair for Defendants argue that they did not affirmatively seek to do business with any Vermont resident by placing classified advertisements in a nationally circulated publication defendants to defend themselves in jurisdictions where they choose to advertise their products. We hold that assertion of personal jurisdiction over defendants will not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”

ALLEN, Chief Justice, dissenting. The constitutional touchstone for personal jurisdiction is “whether the defendant purposefully established ‘minimum contacts' in *the forum State.”

I fail to see how the placement of an advertisement in a national publication, without more, is an act purposefully directed at Vermont.   The frequency of an activity does not, alter the nature of that conduct or convert it into conduct deemed to be directed at the citizens or state of Vermont. Defendants either availed themselves of the “benefits and protections” of Vermont's laws, or they did not. It should make no difference whether defendants advertised once or a hundred times. 

This exercise of jurisdiction exceeds the limits imposed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

I am authorized to say that Justice Dooley joins in this dissent

Beth Robinson of Langrock Sperry & Wool, Middlebury, for plaintiff-appellant

Placing product in stream of commerce is a basis for personal jurisdiction.

State v. Atlantic Richfield Co.,2016 VT 22 (filed February 12, 2016)

REIBER, C.J.This interlocutory appeal requires us to examine the contours of the "stream-of-commerce" doctrine of personal jurisdiction, which was introduced by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1980 decision but later divided the Court with respect to its scope. Defendant Total Petrochemicals & Refining USA, Inc. (TPRI) challenges a decision of the superior court, civil division, denying its motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, a complaint alleging that TPRI, along with twenty-eight other defendants, contaminated the waters of the state by introducing into those waters a gas additive called methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). We affirm.

The superior court "has discretion to decide a pretrial motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction on the basis of affidavits alone, to permit discovery, and to conduct an evidentiary hearing." Godino v. Cleanthes, 163 Vt. 237, 239, 656 A.2d 991, 992 (1995). If, as in this case, "a court chooses to rule on a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction on the basis of affidavits alone, the party opposing [the] motion need make only a prima facie showing of jurisdiction, or, in other words, demonstrate facts which would support a finding of jurisdiction." Id. The nonmoving party's prima facie showing must go beyond the pleadings and rely upon specific facts set forth in the record. Schwartz v. Frankenhoff, 169 Vt. 287, 295, 733 A.2d 74, 81 (1999). "In assessing the submitted materials, the [trial] court eschews fact finding and simply accepts properly supported proffers of evidence as true and rules on the jurisdictional question as a matter of law." Id.

The crux of TPRI's argument on appeal is that recent controlling U.S. Supreme Court case law-specifically J. McIntyre Mach., Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U.S. 1058, 131 S. Ct. 2780 (2011) and Walden v. Fiore, ___ U.S. ___, 134 S. Ct. 1115 (2014)-preclude Vermont courts from exercising personal jurisdiction over it in this case. According to TPRI, those cases stand for the propositions, respectively, that a defendant cannot be subjected to personal jurisdiction based on either the mere foreseeability that its product will end up in the subject forum or the unilateral conduct of third parties. We conclude that the governing law permits the exercise of personal jurisdiction in Vermont under the circumstances of this case.

Although "`foreseeability'" alone has never been a sufficient benchmark for personal jurisdiction under the Due Process Clause," it is not "wholly irrelevant." World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 295, 297. "[T]he foreseeability that is critical to due process analysis is not the mere likelihood that a product will find its way into the forum State," but rather "that the defendant's conduct and connection with the forum State are such that he should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there." Id. at 297. Therefore, "[t]he forum State does not exceed its powers under the Due Process Clause if it asserts personal jurisdiction over a corporation that delivers its products into the stream of commerce with the expectation that they will be purchased by consumers in the forum State." World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 297-98

World-Wide Volkswagen's stream-of-commerce analysis is the governing law on the stream-of-commerce doctrine, given the failure of the competing factions on the U.S. Supreme Court since that decision to garner a majority of votes to limit or expand the doctrine. Accordingly, we reject TPRI's argument that both the plurality and concurring opinions in McIntyre preclude the exercise of personal jurisdiction over a defendant based solely on the defendant's introduction of its product into a national distribution system aimed at bringing the product into the forum state among others. Given the facts of this case as they have been developed thus far, we conclude that the superior court did not err in denying TPRI's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

No personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant for relief from abuse based on out-of-state assault.

Fox v. Fox, 2014 VT 100 (14-Aug-2014)

ROBINSON, J. This case requires us to evaluate the constitutional requirements for personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant in the context of a relief-from-abuse (RFA) order. Nonresident defendant appeals the family court order granting plaintiff’s request for a final RFA order. We conclude that the trial court lacked personal jurisdiction to enter a final RFA order, and reverse.

On April 6, 2012, defendant, a New Hampshire resident, and plaintiff, a Vermont resident, attended a probate court hearing in New Hampshire. Following the hearing, defendant followed plaintiff to his car and proceeded to punch, kick, and step on plaintiff. Plaintiff was hospitalized as a result of the encounter.

Plaintiff filed a complaint for relief from abuse with the family division of the Windsor Superior Court. The trial court granted a temporary RFA order. The court interpreted 15 V.S.A. § 1102 to establish jurisdiction in RFA cases even in the absence of minimum contacts between defendant and the forum state. .

Vermont’s long-arm statute, 12 V.S.A. § 913(b), permits state courts to exercise jurisdiction over nonresident defendants “to the full extent permitted by the Due Process Clause” of the U.S. Constitution. N. Aircraft, Inc. v. Reed, 154 Vt. 36, 40, 572 A.2d 1382, 1385 (1990). Vermont’s RFA statute cannot extend the court’s jurisdiction beyond the bounds of federal due process. Accordingly, the statutory and constitutional analyses in this case are one and the same.

The focus of the minimum contacts inquiry is on the relationship among the defendant, the forum state, and the cause of action. A court may exercise either general or specific jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant. General jurisdiction applies to suits not arising out of or related to the defendant’s contacts with the forum state. Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 415 n.9 (1984). Nobody suggests that Vermont has general jurisdiction to adjudicate claims against defendant

A court may exercise specific jurisdiction where a defendant has “purposefully directed . . . activities at residents of the forum and the litigation results from alleged injuries that arise out of or relate to those activities.” By attacking plaintiff in New Hampshire, defendant did not avail himself of any benefits or protections of Vermont’s laws, or subject himself to the authority of Vermont’s courts. The fact that plaintiff happens to be a Vermont resident is not itself enough to give Vermont courts jurisdiction over a New Hampshire defendant for an assault in New Hampshire. .

In light of defendant’s stipulation that he abused plaintiff, and the relative proximity of New Hampshire, this may seem like a harsh result. But we decline to carve out a blanket exemption from the constitutional due process requirement of personal jurisdiction for requests for final RFA orders. The due process requirement that a court have personal jurisdiction before entering a judgment against a defendant applies to those defendants with meritorious defenses, as well as those without. And it applies to defendants in New Mexico as well as New Hampshire.

We conclude that the trial court lacked the personal jurisdiction required to issue a final RFA order.