Venue as a Separate Ring

Proper Venue in Federal Court

Venue as a Separate Ring

A federal civil suit must clear three hurdles before it can go forward, and venue is the third. Subject matter jurisdiction asks whether the federal court may hear this kind of case. Personal jurisdiction asks whether the court may exercise power over this defendant. Venue asks which federal district is the proper place for the trial. Each is a separate ring, and a plaintiff who satisfies two of them has not touched the third.¹

The word venue refers to the particular court within a court system where a lawsuit can be brought. In federal court, each judicial district is its own venue. Section 1391 supplies the general rules, and it claims wide territory: except as otherwise provided by law, it “shall govern the venue of all civil actions brought in district courts of the United States.”² The qualifier matters. Specialized venue provisions govern many claims that appear to fall under § 1391, and patent infringement is the familiar example.³

The three limits differ in source and in purpose. Personal jurisdiction arises from the Due Process Clause and protects an individual liberty interest, while subject matter jurisdiction is a statutory and constitutional restriction on the court’s power.⁴ Venue rests on neither. It is a statutory requirement that regulates the flow of judicial business within the federal system and identifies a convenient forum for the parties.⁵ The events alternative shows the idea at work. It aims to assure a relation between the events being litigated and the place of trial, and that relation exists in every district where significant events took place.⁶

Venue protects the defendant “against the risk that a plaintiff will select an unfair or inconvenient place of trial,” so the defendant may give it up.⁷ A defendant waives the objection by failing to raise it in the first response to the complaint. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(1). The parties may also agree in advance on where their disputes will be heard, and courts generally enforce such forum selection clauses even when they name a district that § 1391 would not otherwise allow.⁸

Courts do not treat the burden of proof uniformly. Thompson placed it on the plaintiff, who must show that venue is proper but, when the court rules without an evidentiary hearing, need make only a prima facie showing, with uncontroverted facts in the complaint taken as true.⁹ Pacer Global Logistics v. National Passenger R.R. Corp. instead treated improper venue as an affirmative defense that the defendant must establish.¹⁰

Venue is measured by judicial district, not by state, so a case can be proper in one district of a state and improper in another.¹¹

Doris is answerable in any New York court, yet venue under the residence alternative lies only where she resides, and the statute looks to the judicial district, not the state.¹² The mismatch also runs the other way. Suppose Grant sues Lee and Longstreet in the Northern District of Ohio, where Grant and Lee conducted extensive negotiations. The district is probably a proper venue under the events alternative. But Longstreet dealt only with Lee, and did so in Virginia, so Grant will probably be unable to satisfy the personal jurisdiction ring as to Longstreet in Ohio.¹³ The question whether a plaintiff may sue in a particular federal district is therefore three questions, and a favorable answer to one says nothing about the other two.

The statute adds that proper venue is determined “without regard to whether the action is local or transitory in nature.”¹⁴ Whichever label fits the claim, § 1391 applies the same tests.

Older opinions must be read with the 2011 amendment in mind. Before 2011, the general venue statute set different rules for diversity cases and for federal-question cases, and the rewrite replaced that split with a single standard for all federal civil actions.¹⁵ The provisions that once appeared in subsection (a) now appear in subsection (b), so a case that quotes the old numbering must be translated into the current text.¹⁶ Pacer shows the translation at work. The court quoted the old § 1391(b), the subsection for actions where jurisdiction is not founded solely on diversity of citizenship. It reasoned that, because all of Jimco’s activity occurred in California, the events language, which now sits in § 1391(b)(2), made the claim against Jimco properly venued in a California district.¹⁷

Subsection (b) says only that a civil action “may be brought in” the places it lists.¹⁸ The first two alternatives, the defendants’ residence and the events or property, stand side by side, so satisfying either suffices. A third applies only when no district qualifies under the first two. Just as more than one court may have jurisdiction, more than one district may be a proper venue, and the plaintiff chooses among them.¹⁹ The next section begins with the residence alternative.