Can A Court in Tennessee Rule Against You If You Live In California?

Personal Jurisdiction & Kathy Griffin

Today, something completely different.

In May of 2017, comedian Kathy Griffin posed for a photo of herself holding up a mock severed head of Donald Trump. The controversy that followed derailed her career.

Griffin, announcing her new tour this year. No severed head in sight.

Griffin explained that when she did the photo shoot, she was still angry over Trump’s comments about Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host, after a presidential debate in 2015 in which Trump said, “you know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her - wherever.” Griffin got a Trump mask, covered it—appropriately, in hindsight—in ketchup, and the rest is history. Griffin was fired from CNN and says she was on the no-fly list for two months.

So, Griffin was no stranger to public controversy when she was sued by a Tennessee man named Samuel Johnson. But there was something interesting about the case procedurally: Griffin lives in California. Johnson, a resident of Tennessee, sued her in that state. (Full disclosure, Griffin and I are friends in real life. I’m interested in the legal issues in this case, which is why I’m writing about it, but I feel like you need to know that).

Without knowing anything about the specifics of the situation, the lawyers among us are already spotting the threshold issue: personal jurisdiction. Under the Constitution, a person who is being sued must have certain “minimum contacts” with the location where the court sits before it can exercise any authority over them. It’s a fairness rule. The seminal case establishing the principle comes from 1945, International Shoe v. Washington. The legal issues involve a court’s authority to subject a defendant in a case before it to the court’s decisions.

Griffin argued the court lacked personal jurisdiction over her. She wasn’t a Tennessee resident and she hadn’t taken any steps that would create the sorts of minimum contacts the means she could be disciplined in one of its courts.

Here are the facts of the case: Samuel Johnson got into an altercation with a teenage boy, Dalton Stevens, who was attending his prom in Franklin, Tennessee, in a long red dress. Dalton Stevens’ boyfriend videotaped Johnson that evening. In that video, which was posted on TikTok and subsequently found its way to Twitter, Johnson calls Stevens “disgusting,” and shouts expletives. Johnson also tries to knock the phone being used to videotape him out of the hands of Stevens’ date and misses, smacking him instead.

Dalton Stevens poses before his high school prom

Afterwards, Johnson told the venerable local paper, the Tennessean, that the only thing he regretted was calling Stevens an idiot. "I will continue to remain calm like I did that night, I will continue to approach things with dignity and respect and I will make every attempt to not use the I-word again, in public," Johnson said.

Kathy Griffin entered the picture after she saw the video on Twitter. She retweeted it, using Johnson’s name and identifying his employer, the Tennessee telehealth company VisuWell, which is now called Hatch. Griffin tagged VisuWell in her tweet. Johnson was their CEO, and he was fired the same day.

Johnson and his wife, apparently with no shame over his behavior towards the teenager, sued Kathy Griffin in federal court in Tennessee for interfering with his employment, inflicting emotional distress on him, invasion of privacy, and negligent injury. Federal Judge Chip Campbell, a Trump appointee, reviewed the lawsuit and dismissed the case in March 2023. He held that his Tennessee-based court lacked personal jurisdiction over Griffin. He wrote, "there are no allegations in the complaint that Griffin's tweets were directed at Tennessee readers, as opposed to the residents of other states, or that Griffin posted her tweets hoping to reach Tennessee specifically as opposed to her two million Twitter followers generally."

That makes sense and is consistent with how the courts have viewed personal jurisdiction. But Johnson appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. In late October, in a move that surprised many legal experts, they ruled that the case could go ahead and that Griffin had sufficient contacts with the state for it to assert personal jurisdiction.

The case now returns to the trial court to proceed on the merits. Griffin will argue, among other things, that it is barred by the First Amendment. Johnson didn’t sue Griffin for defamation and could not have because the video she retweeted depicted actual events. Defamation requires proof of false statements about a person. Rather, Johnson sued Griffin for torts—civil wrongs—including interference with his employment, infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and negligent injury. The case’s ultimate outcome is far from certain and will test the limits of accountability for activity on social media. But if the Sixth Circuit’s ruling stands, it will have broad implications for speech on online platforms and the ability of people to block the truth about their actions from being shared. In an era where disinformation spreads rampantly, this is a case about whether it’s wrong to share the truth.

It was a lot easier for the Johnsons to file their lawsuit in Tennessee than it would have been if they’d had to file it in California. Less expensive too. Of course, it was more complicated for Griffin, who had to find lawyers who could practice in a state 2/3 of the way across the country, and would be forced to defend herself on the Johnsons’ home turf in an environment where the actions of a controversial California comedian might be viewed in a less-than-friendly light.

The doctrine of personal jurisdiction requires Griffin to have “intentionally cultivate[d] contacts with the forum State,” rather than just having “random, fortuitous, or attenuated contacts.” On the face of the situation, it’s difficult to see how her contacts with the state went beyond the fortuitous. But Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who wrote the opinion for the court, decided that Griffin’s tweets were within the jurisdiction of the Tennessee court to consider because of her “intention.” He wrote, "Griffin intended that the 'brunt of the harm' would befall Johnson in Tennessee when she urged her followers to pressure VisuWell, a Tennessee-based company, to fire him and urged VisuWell to remove him from the board," Judge Sutton wrote. “She 'undoubtedly knew' that the 'focal point' of her tweets concerned Tennessee."

At oral argument Judge Sutton emphasized that the Sixth Circuit respected precedent (a view I wish they would share with the Supreme Court). In this case, the precedent he was referring to involved an earlier Griffin' tweet about a Kentucky high school student at a March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. Some of the students involved tried to sue her in Kentucky, but those claims were dismissed for a lack of personal jurisdiction. Judge Sutton held that the difference here was that Griffin’s Tweet was directed to Johnson’s employer in Tennessee.

This case is a good illustration of how the internet is changing the law. And it’s an interesting issue to be aware of when you tweet, thread, or post anywhere online. Personal jurisdiction is an important legal doctrine designed to balance rights between plaintiffs and defendants and ensure no one faces legal action in a jurisdiction they weren’t sufficiently connected to. As in many other areas of the law, the internet challenges traditional rules and understandings about where the lines should be drawn. As much as this case may end up being important because of its First Amendment implications, this preliminary decision by the Sixth Circuit, which lets the case proceed, will have long-lasting importance for how we engage online.

But the First Amendment issue itself is still a big deal. In the era of Trump, we’ve become more attuned to the importance of where the limitations on free speech exist. You can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater, but when can you criticize someone’s conduct, especially when it’s committed in public for all to see? I’ll be watching this case with interest as it works its way through the courts.

We’re in this together,

Joyce