Plaintiff brought a personal injury lawsuit in Texas against Samsung SDI Company after an 18650″ lithium-ion battery exploded in his pocket.  The district dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, but the U.S. Fifth Circuit reversed.

“Samsung SDI is a South Korean corporation with its principal place of business in South Korea. Samsung does not have a physical presence in the United States, but uses various subsidiaries and distribution companies to serve customers in the United States. “With respect to 18650 lithium-ion batteries, Samsung has two kinds of contacts with the forum State of Texas. The first kind of contact is direct and clear. Since January 2019, Samsung has shipped 18650 batteries to Black & Decker’s Texas manufacturing facility to be incorporated into sealed power tool battery packs. For a number of years (at all times relevant to this litigation), Samsung has also shipped 18650 batteries to HP and Dell to be used as samples or for laptop repairs in their Texas service centers. The second kind of contact is less direct and less clear. Samsung sells 18650 batteries to ‘sophisticated and qualified’ businesses, which typically use them in battery packs. Some of these battery packs end up in products that are sold to Texas consumers. Samsung contends, however, that it has no control over what happens to its 18650 batteries after it sells them to its business customers in Texas.

“James Ethridge is a citizen of Texas. In October 2018, he bought a Samsung 18650 lithium-ion battery from a Wyoming-based seller on Amazon. The battery was presumably shipped to Ethridge in Texas, although the record does not describe how the Wyoming seller obtained the battery or got it to Ethridge. Ethridge appears to have bought the battery for the purpose of powering an e-cigarette device. In November 2019, the Samsung 18650 battery exploded while it was in Ethridge’s pocket in League City, Texas….

“The crux of the case is the Supreme Court’s second condition for exercising specific personal jurisdiction: whether Ethridge’s claims arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts with the forum….

“As best we can tell,” the Court of Appeal said about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ford, “the Court appeared to adopt the following rule for relatedness: Where the defendant sold a non-insignificant volume of product in the forum State, an in-state plaintiff’s suit involving the in-state use of and in-state injury from the same product will satisfy the relatedness condition of specific personal jurisdiction. Call it the ‘same product plus in-state injury’ test for relatedness.

“Three points support this reading of Ford.

“First, the Court rejected Ford’s exclusively causal view of relatedness….

“Next, the Court emphasized the close connection between Ford’s in-state activities and the products that injured the plaintiffs. The Court thrice remarked that specific personal jurisdiction would attach when a company serves a market for a product in a State and that same product causes injury in the State….  Because it was fair for Montana and Minnesota to regulate the in-state sales of Explorers or Crown Victorias, it was permissible for those States to provide a forum for in-state injuries arising from out-of-state sales of the same models….

“Finally, the Court laid down guardrails to ensure that relatedness does not mean that anything goes. It did so by underscoring the limitations that come from its 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers. Beyond that, the Court seemed to emphasize this was not a case where Ford only made ‘isolated’ or ‘sporadic’ sales in Montana or Minnesota. Rather, Ford sold a large volume of Explorers and Crown Victorias in the forum States.”

While noting that “it is a perilous project to interpret a Supreme Court decision that the Justices themselves interpret differently,” the Court of Appeals found that the “doctrinal line suggests Texas can exercise personal jurisdiction over Samsung. Ethridge is a Texas resident, he used his 18650 battery in Texas, and he suffered an injury in Texas. Accordingly, Ethridge’s suit complies with Ford’s same-model-plus-in-state-injury condition for relatedness.” The Court observed, in this respect, that: “Samsung admits that it sells 18650 batteries directly to customers in Texas, including HP, Dell, and Black & Decker. There is no reason to believe that those 18650 batteries are different in any way from the 18650 battery that exploded in Ethridge’s pocket. And, while it is not clear how many batteries were sold to Samsung’s corporate customers, the record does not suggest that the sales are ‘isolated’ or sporadic’ ….

“In closing, one broader point bears emphasis. No one debates that Texas’s long-arm statute enables the State’s courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over Samsung…. The only remaining obstacle is the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. So Samsung must show that such an exercise of personal jurisdiction is unconstitutional. The nature of that constitutional objection should give us pause. How should we analyze the contention that personal jurisdiction offends ‘fair play and substantial justice’? The doctrine does not come from constitutional text or original law. It instead turns on the substantive component of the Due Process Clause, as interpreted by binding Supreme Court precedent. So the only way to resolve cases like this one is to ask whether the defendant carried its burden to show that Supreme Court precedent gives it the right to object to personal jurisdiction in the forum State. While we acknowledge that reasonable jurists can interpret that precedent differently, we think Samsung failed to carry its burden.”

 

Ethridge v. Samsung, No.23-40094, 2025 WL 1389341 (5th Cir. May 14, 2025).