Lawsuit filed by conspiracy nuts against DNC is dismissed.

[Jim Lane]

15. Your notion of jurisdiction wasn't incorrect, just incomplete

Last edited Sun Aug 27, 2017, 02:38 PM - Edit history (1)

The term “jurisdiction” encompasses two issues. One is personal jurisdiction – can this defendant be compelled to litigate here? The other is subject matter jurisdiction – is this case of the type that this court can hear?

Personal jurisdiction obviously relates to residence. You can’t force people to defend a case in a state where they don’t live and have no contacts. The tricky point is that, for federal courts (as opposed to most state courts), subject matter jurisdiction can also relate to residence. That’s why Judge Zloch got into the question.

You write, “I have no idea what the jurisdictional distinctions between a DC Court and Federal Court would be, that is above my non-lawyer head.” The answer is that DC courts are, in a sense, federal courts, but that’s because of the federal government’s control of the District (the “nation’s capital, nation’s colony” situation). For many purposes, the District is treated as if it were a state. When Judge Zloch wrote that federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, he was referring to the federal courts that are “really” federal in the sense of being governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1332, the statutory provision concerning federal district courts around the country. In the District, as in every state, there’s a federal district court that’s subject to 28 U.S.C. § 1332, but there are also courts run by the DC government that are analogous to state courts and are not subject to that statute.

You write, “What we have, at the very worst, is a situation where person A goes on TV and says something false, and then person B decides to give person C some money.” That’s applicable to what Judge Zloch called the Sanders Donor Class Plaintiffs, but there were also DNC Donor Class Plaintiffs. These were people who, in your terms, alleged that person A had said something false and they had then given person A some money. That’s a classic fraud claim. I don’t know enough about the law of fraud to opine about whether person A can be liable for inducing donations to person C.