Jurisdiction and Transfer: The Conditions for a Court to Take a Case

Abstract

This volume asks whether a wrongly chosen court should become the end point of the search for a remedy. Only by distinguishing lack of jurisdiction from transfer between courts having jurisdiction can the loss of refiling a suit from the beginning be reduced. The path to relief opens where the chosen court has jurisdiction or where the lack of jurisdiction has been corrected by a lawful transfer, and closes where the chosen court lacks jurisdiction yet it is presumed that a judgment on the merits can be obtained in that court. The six sections address, in turn, the starting point of general venue, corporations and their offices, the joinder of related claims, the form of agreed jurisdiction, transfer for lack of jurisdiction, and the limits of transfer for convenience. The strongest counterargument is as follows. The convenience of transfer may infringe the opposing party's choice of where to defend and exclusive jurisdiction. International jurisdiction and the scheduling of parallel cases are not addressed in this volume.