C. Al Buis v. DLI Assets Bravo, LLC

The Due Process Clause of the Article 14 of the Constitution allows state courts to exercise specific jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant only if the plaintiff’s litigation claims “arise out of or relate to” the defendant’s forum conduct. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 472-473, 105 S. Ct. 2174, 2182, 85 L. Ed. 2d 528 (1985). To give fair warning of possible suit there, for “a State to exercise jurisdiction consistent with due process, that relationship [between the defendant and the forum] must arise out of contacts that the defendant himself creates with the forum…”. Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 284, 113 S. Ct. 1115, 1122, 188 L. Ed. 2d 12 (2014) (emphasis in the original). The question presented is: In a suit on a loan guaranty, can specific personal jurisdiction be involuntarily created over an out-of-state guarantor based solely on a co-defendant’s consent, for itself, to a forum-selection consent clause in its two-party borrower agreement with the lender, when the guarantor did not negotiate or sign the codefendant’s borrower agreement nor sign or approve the defendant’s alleged guaranty agreement, which guaranty had no forum consent clause itself and did not reference the forum consent clause in the borrower agreement?