Author: Gilda R. Turitz

Publication: Financer.com

Summary: Ending 50 years of US federal courts’ disagreements over how to define a corporation’s ‘principal place of business’ in order to determine whether ‘diversity of citizenship’ exists between the litigants for jurisdictional purposes, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hertz Corp. v. Friend, No. 08-117, 2010 WL

605601 (23 February 2010), will give corporations – particularly those with widely varied activities conducted in different states – more certainty and control in defining their corporate citizenship and exercising their preference for federal court as the forum to defend and prosecute lawsuits. Federal court

jurisdiction is often favoured because of perceived bias in state courts toward out-of-state corporations.

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