Where Do We Sue?

One of the questions that I get most often is "where do we file the lawsuit?" The simplest and most basic answer to this is: where the defendant is. Generally speaking, the court where the lawsuit is filed must have jurisdiction over the defendant, also known as personal jurisdiction.

There are several ways for a court to get personal jurisdiction, but the easiest and most obvious way is for the defendant to live in the territorial limits of the court. For a business, this includes the county in which the principal offices are. In the case of multiple defendants, you can pick any court that has jurisdiction over any one of the defendants.

There are other ways for a court to get personal jurisdiction over a defendant. Another common way that courts get jurisdiction is by agreement. In many contracts, particularly in the business contetxt, the parties agree to the personal jurisdiction of a given court. This is often determined by the stronger or bigger party to the contract or whoever drafts the contract.

Georgia also has a long-arm statute that allows the courts of Georgia to have personal jurisdiction over out-of-state residents when they have some sort of connection to this state. Generally, that involves situations where the defendant was once in the state - think a motorist driving through the state that gets in a car wreck - or has significant connections to the state - think a business advertising for sales in a state. In those cases, you have to follow the statute to determine where the lawsuit will be filed, but it is most often filed in the county where the harm occurred.

The above aren't the only ways for a court to get personal jurisdiction over a defendant, but are the most common ways.