Venue, Forum Non Conveniens, and Federal Court Transfers

Classes 6-8 concerned where, geographically, a plaintiff could initiate a case under the doctrines of jurisdiction over a person or a piece of property.  Most of the law we studied in the personal jurisdiction doctrine came from the U.S. Constitution.  Because of Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(k)(1)(A), we treated (for the purposes of this course) a federal court the same as a state court of the state in which the federal court sat.

In this class period, we study another, overlapping geographic doctrine. This doctrine is called venue.  Whereas personal jurisdiction concerned the state in which a plaintiff could initiate a case, in the federal courts, venue concerns the federal district in which a plaintiff may initiate a case. The two (states and districts) are distinct.  Some states have multiple districts.  At least one federal district's boundaries cross a state line.  (In the state courts, venue typically governs the county in which a plaintiff must initiate a case, but we do not study state court venue in this course.)

Jurisdiction over the person or property implements constitutional values and doctrine; it concerns protecting the defendant from an oppressive forum and preventing distinct sovereigns, particularly states, from encroaching upon each other's power spheres.  Venue, in contrast, is purely established by statutes and court rules, and its purpose is mostly minimization of expense and inconvenience of the court and the parties.

In addition to venue, this class period will cover two doctrines available to move a case from one location to another, even if the plaintiff filed the case in a location consistent with all legal restrictions.  In the first, forum non conveniens, the court dismisses the case before it and invites the plaintiff to refile in another location, frequently after the defendant (who has typically requested the FNC dismissal) has promised not to assert certain defenses.  In the second, transfer, a court issues an order moving the case from one location to another.

Courts use FNC to "move" a case from one state court to another state court, or from either a state or a federal court to a court outside the United States.

The transfer statutes are available only to move a case from one federal court to another.

Neither doctrine is available to "move" a case from a state court to a federal court, or from a federal court to a state court.  At this point, you should be able to hazard a guess as to why not.