Congratulations to DP&S partner, Roz Bienvenu, who worked with trial counsel William Angelley, Craig Schllapprizzi, and Tom Crosley, to successfully defend a Bexar County trial court’s order denying a special appearance by an aircraft manufacturer, Cirrus Design Corp., in a wrongful death products liability case. The plaintiff’s husband, an Air Force major stationed in Texas, was killed when the Cirrus aircraft he was piloting crashed in Bexar County. Cirrus argued that it should not be subject to suit in Texas because the plaintiff’s claims did not arise from or relate to any purposeful activity it conducted in Texas. The San Antonio Court of Appeals rejected this argument, finding that Cirrus conducts ample business activity in Texas and that the plaintiff’s claims were sufficiently related to that activity, relying on two recent, important jurisdiction cases, Ford Motor Co. v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S. Ct. 1017 (2021), and Luciano v. SprayFoamPolymers.com, LLC, No. 18-0350, 2021 WL 2603840 (Tex. Jun. 25, 2021), which recently clarified the boundaries of specific personal jurisdiction and, in particular, the required nexus between a defendant’s in-state conduct and a plaintiff’s claims. You can read the opinion in Cirrus Design Corp. v. Berra, No. 04-20-00399-CV, — S.W.3d —, 2021 WL 3742683 (Tex. App.—San Antonio Aug. 25, 2021, no pet. h.), here.
