FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Petitioner

v.
MONTANA EIGHTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT;

FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Petitioner

v.
ADAM BANDEMER

141 S.Ct. 1017

Supreme Court of the United States.
Decided March 25, 2021

Holdings: The Supreme Court, Justice Kagan, held that:

[1] due process test for specific personal jurisdiction did not depend on a strict causation-only approach that would
ask where the vehicles were originally sold, or where they were designed and manufacture, and

[2] manufacturer’s substantial business in forum States supported specific personal jurisdiction under due process
principles.

Affirmed.

Procedural Posture(s): Petition for Writ of Certiorari; Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction.

KAGAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and
KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. GORSUCH, J., filed an opinion
concurring in the judgment, in which THOMAS, J., joined. BARRETT, J., took no part in the consideration or
decision of the cases.

Justice KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

In each of these two cases, a state court held that it had jurisdiction over Ford Motor Company in a products-liability
suit stemming from a car accident. The accident happened in the State where suit was brought. The victim was one
of the State’s residents. And Ford did substantial business in the State—among other things, advertising, selling, and
servicing the model of vehicle the suit claims is defective. Still, Ford contends that jurisdiction is improper because
the particular car involved in the crash was not first sold in the forum State, nor was it designed or manufactured
there. We reject that argument. When a company like Ford serves a market for a product in a State and that product
causes injury in the State to one of its residents, the State’s courts may entertain the resulting suit.

Ford is a global auto company. It is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Michigan. But its business is
everywhere. Ford markets, sells, and services its products across the United States and overseas. In this country
alone, the company annually distributes over 2.5 million new cars, trucks, and SUVs to over 3,200 licensed
dealerships. Ford also encourages a resale market for its products: Almost all its dealerships buy and sell used Fords,
as well as selling new ones. To enhance its brand and increase its sales, Ford engages in wide-ranging promotional
activities, including television, print, online, and direct-mail advertisements. No matter where you live, you’ve seen
them: “Have you driven a Ford lately?” or “Built Ford Tough.” Ford also ensures that consumers can keep their
vehicles running long past the date of sale. The company provides original parts to auto supply stores and repair
shops across the country. (Goes another slogan: “Keep your Ford a Ford.”) And Ford’s own network of dealers
offers an array of maintenance and repair services, thus fostering an ongoing relationship between Ford and its
customers.
Accidents involving two of Ford’s vehicles—a 1996 Explorer and a 1994 Crown Victoria—are at the heart of the
suits before us. One case comes from Montana. Markkaya Gullett was driving her Explorer near her home in the
State when the tread separated from a rear tire. The vehicle spun out, rolled into a ditch, and came to rest upside
down. Gullett died at the scene of the crash. The representative of her estate sued Ford in Montana state court,
bringing claims for a design defect, failure to warn, and negligence. The second case comes from Minnesota. Adam
Bandemer was a passenger in his friend’s Crown Victoria, traveling on a rural road in the State to a favorite ice-
fishing spot. When his friend rear-ended a snowplow, this car too landed in a ditch. Bandemer’s air bag failed to
deploy, and he suffered serious brain damage. He sued Ford in Minnesota state court, asserting products-liability,
negligence, and breach of warranty claims.

Ford moved to dismiss the two suits for lack of personal jurisdiction, on basically identical grounds. According to
Ford, the state court (whether in Montana or Minnesota) had jurisdiction only if the company’s conduct in the State
had given rise to the plaintiff’s claims. And that causal link existed, Ford continued, only if the company had
designed, manufactured, or—most likely—sold in the State the particular vehicle involved in the accident. In neither
suit could the plaintiff make that showing. Ford had designed the Explorer and Crown Victoria in Michigan, and it
had manufactured the cars in (respectively) Kentucky and Canada. Still more, the company had originally sold the
cars at issue outside the forum States—the Explorer in Washington, the Crown Victoria in North Dakota. Only later
resales and relocations by consumers had brought the vehicles to Montana and Minnesota. That meant, in Ford’s
view, that the courts of those States could not decide the suits.

Both the Montana and the Minnesota Supreme Courts (affirming lower court decisions) rejected Ford’s argument.
The Montana court began by detailing the varied ways Ford “purposefully” seeks to “serve the market in Montana.”
The company advertises in the State; “has thirty-six dealerships” there; “sells automobiles, specifically Ford
Explorers, and parts” to Montana residents; and provides them with “certified repair, replacement, and recall
services.” Next, the court assessed the relationship between those activities and the Gullett suit. Ford’s conduct, said
the court, encourages “Montana residents to drive Ford vehicles.” When that driving causes in-state injury, the
ensuing claims have enough of a tie to Ford’s Montana activities to support jurisdiction. Whether Ford “designed,
manufactured, or sold the vehicle” in the State, the court concluded, is “immaterial.” Minnesota’s Supreme Court
agreed. It highlighted how Ford’s “marketing and advertisements” influenced state residents to “purchase and drive
more Ford vehicles.” Indeed, Ford had sold in Minnesota “more than 2,000 1994 Crown Victorias”—the “very type
of car” involved in Bandemer’s suit. That the “particular vehicle” injuring him was “designed, manufactured, and
first sold” elsewhere made no difference. (emphasis in original). In the court’s view, Ford’s Minnesota activities still
had the needed connection to Bandemer’s allegations that a defective Crown Victoria caused in-state injury.

We granted certiorari to consider if Ford is subject to jurisdiction in these cases. We hold that it is.

II

The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause limits a state court’s power to exercise jurisdiction over a
defendant. The canonical decision in this area remains International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945).
There, the Court held that a tribunal’s authority depends on the defendant’s having such “contacts” with the forum
State that “the maintenance of the suit” is “reasonable, in the context of our federal system of government,” and
“does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” In giving content to that formulation, the
Court has long focused on the nature and extent of “the defendant’s relationship to the forum State.” Bristol-Myers
Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S.Ct. 1773 (2017) That focus led to our recognizing two kinds of personal
jurisdiction: general (sometimes called all-purpose) jurisdiction and specific (sometimes called case-linked)
jurisdiction. See Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S. A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915 (2011).

A state court may exercise general jurisdiction only when a defendant is “essentially at home” in the State. General
jurisdiction, as its name implies, extends to “any and all claims” brought against a defendant. Those claims need not
relate to the forum State or the defendant’s activity there; they may concern events and conduct anywhere in the
world. But that breadth imposes a correlative limit: Only a select “set of affiliations with a forum” will expose a
defendant to such sweeping jurisdiction. In what we have called the “paradigm” case, an individual is subject to
general jurisdiction in her place of domicile. And the “equivalent” forums for a corporation are its place of
incorporation and principal place of business. See Goodyear at 139, n. 19 (leaving open “the possibility that in an
exceptional case” a corporation might also be “at home” elsewhere). So general jurisdiction over Ford (as all parties
agree) attaches in Delaware and Michigan—not in Montana and Minnesota.

Specific jurisdiction is different: It covers defendants less intimately connected with a State, but only as to a
narrower class of claims. The contacts needed for this kind of jurisdiction often go by the name “purposeful
availment.” Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462 (1985). The defendant, we have said, must take “some
act by which [it] purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State.” Hanson
v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235 (1958). The contacts must be the defendant’s own choice and not “random, isolated, or
fortuitous.” Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770 (1984). They must show that the defendant deliberately
“reached out beyond” its home—by, for example, “exploiting a market” in the forum State or entering a contractual
relationship centered there. Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277 (2014). Yet even then—because the defendant is not “at
home”—the forum State may exercise jurisdiction in only certain cases. The plaintiff’s claims, we have often stated,
“must arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts” with the forum. Bristol-Myers, 137 S.Ct. 1780 (quoting
Daimler, 571 U.S. at 127). Or put just a bit differently, “there must be ‘an affiliation between the forum and the
underlying controversy, principally, [an] activity or an occurrence that takes place in the forum State and is therefore
subject to the State’s regulation.’ ” Bristol-Myers, 137 S.Ct. at 1780 (quoting Goodyear, 564 U.S. at 919).

These rules derive from and reflect two sets of values—treating defendants fairly and protecting “interstate
federalism.” World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U. S. 286 (1980). Our decision in International Shoe
founded specific jurisdiction on an idea of reciprocity between a defendant and a State: When (but only when) a
company “exercises the privilege of conducting activities within a state”—thus “enjoy[ing] the benefits and
protection of [its] laws”—the State may hold the company to account for related misconduct. Later decisions have
added that our doctrine similarly provides defendants with “fair warning”—knowledge that “a particular activity
may subject [it] to the jurisdiction of a foreign sovereign.” A defendant can thus “structure [its] primary conduct” to
lessen or avoid exposure to a given State’s courts. And this Court has considered alongside defendants’ interests
those of the States in relation to each other. One State’s “sovereign power to try” a suit, we have recognized, may
prevent “sister States” from exercising their like authority. The law of specific jurisdiction thus seeks to ensure that
States with “little legitimate interest” in a suit do not encroach on States more affected by the controversy. Bristol-
Myers, 137 S.Ct. at 1780.

Ford contends that our jurisdictional rules prevent Montana’s and Minnesota’s courts from deciding these two suits.
In making that argument, Ford does not contest that it does substantial business in Montana and Minnesota—that it
actively seeks to serve the market for automobiles and related products in those States. Or to put that concession in
more doctrinal terms, Ford agrees that it has “purposefully availed itself of the privilege of conducting activities” in
both places. Ford’s claim is instead that those activities do not sufficiently connect to the suits, even though the
resident-plaintiffs allege that Ford cars malfunctioned in the forum States. In Ford’s view, the needed link must be
causal in nature: Jurisdiction attaches “only if the defendant’s forum conduct gave rise to the plaintiff’s claims.” And
that rule reduces, Ford thinks, to locating specific jurisdiction in the State where Ford sold the car in question, or
else the States where Ford designed and manufactured the vehicle. On that view, the place of accident and injury is
immaterial. So (Ford says) Montana’s and Minnesota’s courts have no power over these cases.

But Ford’s causation-only approach finds no support in this Court’s requirement of a “connection” between a
plaintiff’s suit and a defendant’s activities. That rule indeed serves to narrow the class of claims over which a state
court may exercise specific jurisdiction. But not quite so far as Ford wants. None of our precedents has suggested
that only a strict causal relationship between the defendant’s in-state activity and the litigation will do. As just noted,
our most common formulation of the rule demands that the suit “arise out of or relate to the defendant’s contacts
with the forum.” Bristol-Myers, 137 S.Ct. at 1780. The first half of that standard asks about causation; but the back
half, after the “or,” contemplates that some relationships will support jurisdiction without a causal showing. That
does not mean anything goes. In the sphere of specific jurisdiction, the phrase “relate to” incorporates real limits, as
it must to adequately protect defendants foreign to a forum.

But again, we have never framed the specific jurisdiction inquiry as always requiring proof of causation—i.e., proof
that the plaintiff’s claim came about because of the defendant’s in-state conduct. See Bristol-Myers at 1780 (asking
whether there is “an affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy,” without demanding that the
inquiry focus on cause). So the case is not over even if, as Ford argues, a causal test would put jurisdiction in only
the States of first sale, manufacture, and design. A different State’s courts may yet have jurisdiction, because of
another “activity or occurrence” involving the defendant that takes place in the State.
And indeed, this Court has stated that specific jurisdiction attaches in cases identical to the ones here—when a
company like Ford serves a market for a product in the forum State and the product malfunctions there. In World-
Wide Volkswagen, the Court held that an Oklahoma court could not assert jurisdiction over a New York car dealer
just because a car it sold later caught fire in Oklahoma. But in so doing, we contrasted the dealer’s position to that of
two other defendants—Audi, the car’s manufacturer, and Volkswagen, the car’s nationwide importer (neither of
which contested jurisdiction):

“[I]f the sale of a product of a manufacturer or distributor such as Audi or Volkswagen is not simply an isolated
occurrence, but arises from the efforts of the manufacturer or distributor to serve, directly or indirectly, the market
for its product in [several or all] other States, it is not unreasonable to subject it to suit in one of those States if its
allegedly defective merchandise has there been the source of injury to its owner or to others.” Id., at 297.

Or said another way, if Audi and Volkswagen’s business deliberately extended into Oklahoma (among other States),
then Oklahoma’s courts could hold the companies accountable for a car’s catching fire there—even though the
vehicle had been designed and made overseas and sold in New York. For, the Court explained, a company thus
“purposefully avail[ing] itself” of the Oklahoma auto market “has clear notice” of its exposure in that State to suits
arising from local accidents involving its cars. And the company could do something about that exposure: It could
“act to alleviate the risk of burdensome litigation by procuring insurance, passing the expected costs on to
customers, or, if the risks are [still] too great, severing its connection with the State.”

Our conclusion in World-Wide Volkswagen—though, as Ford notes, technically “dicta,” — has appeared and
reappeared in many cases since. And in Daimler, we used the Audi/Volkswagen scenario as a paradigm case of
specific jurisdiction (though now naming Daimler, the maker of Mercedes Benzes). Said the Court, to “illustrate”
specific jurisdiction’s “province”: A California court would exercise specific jurisdiction “if a California plaintiff,
injured in a California accident involving a Daimler-manufactured vehicle, sued Daimler in that court alleging that
the vehicle was defectively designed.” 571 U.S. at 127, n. 5. As in World-Wide Volkswagen, the Court did not limit
jurisdiction to where the car was designed, manufactured, or first sold. Substitute Ford for Daimler, Montana and
Minnesota for California, and the Court’s “illustrative” case becomes the two cases before us.

To see why Ford is subject to jurisdiction in these cases (as Audi, Volkswagen, and Daimler were in their analogues),
consider first the business that the company regularly conducts in Montana and Minnesota. Small wonder that Ford
has here conceded “purposeful availment” of the two States’ markets. By every means imaginable—among them,
billboards, TV and radio spots, print ads, and direct mail—Ford urges Montanans and Minnesotans to buy its
vehicles, including (at all relevant times) Explorers and Crown Victorias. Ford cars—again including those two
models—are available for sale, whether new or used, throughout the States, at 36 dealerships in Montana and 84 in
Minnesota. And apart from sales, Ford works hard to foster ongoing connections to its cars’ owners. The company’s
dealers in Montana and Minnesota (as elsewhere) regularly maintain and repair Ford cars, including those whose
warranties have long since expired. And the company distributes replacement parts both to its own dealers and to
independent auto shops in the two States. Those activities, too, make Ford money. And by making it easier to own a
Ford, they encourage Montanans and Minnesotans to become lifelong Ford drivers.

Now turn to how all this Montana- and Minnesota-based conduct relates to the claims in these cases, brought by
state residents in Montana’s and Minnesota’s courts. Each plaintiff’s suit, of course, arises from a car accident in one
of those States. In each complaint, the resident-plaintiff alleges that a defective Ford vehicle—an Explorer in one, a
Crown Victoria in the other—caused the crash and resulting harm. And as just described, Ford had advertised, sold,
and serviced those two car models in both States for many years. (Contrast a case, which we do not address, in
which Ford marketed the models in only a different State or region.) In other words, Ford had systematically served
a market in Montana and Minnesota for the very vehicles that the plaintiffs allege malfunctioned and injured them in
those States. So there is a strong “relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation”—the “essential
foundation” of specific jurisdiction. That is why this Court has used this exact fact pattern (a resident-plaintiff sues a
global car company, extensively serving the state market in a vehicle, for an in-state accident) as an illustration—
even a paradigm example—of how specific jurisdiction works. See Daimler, 571 U.S. at 127, n. 5.4
4 None of this is to say that any person using
any means to sell any good in a State is
subject to jurisdiction there if the product
malfunctions after arrival. We have long
treated isolated or sporadic transactions
differently from continuous ones. See, e.g.,
 World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson,
444 U.S. 286, 297 (1980). And we do not here
consider internet transactions, which may
raise doctrinal questions of their own. See
Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 290, n. 9
(2014) (“[T]his case does not present the very
different questions whether and how a
defendant’s virtual ‘presence’ and conduct
translate into ‘contacts’ with a particular
State”).
The only complication here, pressed by Ford, is that the company sold the specific cars involved in these crashes
outside the forum States, with consumers later selling them to the States’ residents. Because that is so, Ford argues,
the plaintiffs’ claims “would be precisely the same if Ford had never done anything in Montana and Minnesota.” Of
course, that argument merely restates Ford’s demand for an exclusively causal test of connection—which we have
already shown is inconsistent with our caselaw. And indeed, a similar assertion could have been made in World-Wide
Volkswagen—yet the Court made clear that systematic contacts in Oklahoma rendered Audi accountable there for an
in-state accident, even though it involved a car sold in New York. So too here, and for the same reasons,—even
supposing (as Ford does) that without the company’s Montana or Minnesota contacts the plaintiffs’ claims would be
just the same.

But in any event, that assumption is far from clear. For the owners of these cars might never have bought them, and
so these suits might never have arisen, except for Ford’s contacts with their home States. Those contacts might turn
any resident of Montana or Minnesota into a Ford owner—even when he buys his car from out of state. He may
make that purchase because he saw ads for the car in local media. And he may take into account a raft of Ford’s in-
state activities designed to make driving a Ford convenient there: that Ford dealers stand ready to service the car;
that other auto shops have ample supplies of Ford parts; and that Ford fosters an active resale market for its old
models. The plaintiffs here did not in fact establish, or even allege, such causal links. Nor should jurisdiction
in cases like these ride on the exact reasons for an individual plaintiff’s purchase, or on his ability to present
persuasive evidence about them.5 But the possibilities listed above—created by the reach of Ford’s Montana and
Minnesota contacts—underscore the aptness of finding jurisdiction here, even though the cars at issue were first sold
out of state.
5 It should, for example, make no difference
if a plaintiff had recently moved to the
forum State with his car, and had not made
his purchasing decision with that move in
mind—so had not considered any of Ford’s
activities in his new home State.

For related reasons, allowing jurisdiction in these cases treats Ford fairly, as this Court’s precedents explain. In
conducting so much business in Montana and Minnesota, Ford “enjoys the benefits and protection of [their] laws”—
the enforcement of contracts, the defense of property, the resulting formation of effective markets. International
Shoe, 326 U.S. at 319. All that assistance to Ford’s in-state business creates reciprocal obligations—most relevant
here, that the car models Ford so extensively markets in Montana and Minnesota be safe for their citizens to use
there. Thus our repeated conclusion: A state court’s enforcement of that commitment, enmeshed as it is with Ford’s
government-protected in-state business, can “hardly be said to be undue.” And as World-Wide Volkswagen described,
it cannot be thought surprising either. An automaker regularly marketing a vehicle in a State, the Court said, has
“clear notice” that it will be subject to jurisdiction in the State’s courts when the product malfunctions there
(regardless where it was first sold). Precisely because that exercise of jurisdiction is so reasonable, it is also
predictable—and thus allows Ford to “structure [its] primary conduct” to lessen or even avoid the costs of state-
court litigation. World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 297.

Finally, principles of “interstate federalism” support jurisdiction over these suits in Montana and Minnesota. Those
States have significant interests at stake—“providing their residents with a convenient forum for redressing injuries
inflicted by out-of-state actors,” as well as enforcing their own safety regulations. Burger King, 471 U.S. at 473.
Consider, next to those, the interests of the States of first sale (Washington and North Dakota)—which Ford’s
proposed rule would make the most likely forums. For each of those States, the suit involves all out-of-state parties,
an out-of-state accident, and out-of-state injuries; the suit’s only connection with the State is that a former owner
once (many years earlier) bought the car there. In other words, there is a less significant “relationship among the
defendant, the forum, and the litigation.” Walden, 571 U.S. at 284. So by channeling these suits to Washington and
North Dakota, Ford’s regime would undermine, rather than promote, what the company calls the Due Process
Clause’s “jurisdiction-allocating function.”

Ford mainly relies for its rule on two of our recent decisions—Bristol-Myers and Walden. But those precedents stand
for nothing like the principal Ford derives from them. If anything, they reinforce all we have said about why
Montana’s and Minnesota’s courts can decide these cases.

Ford says of Bristol-Myers that it “squarely foreclose[s]” jurisdiction. In that case, non-resident plaintiffs brought
claims in California state court against Bristol-Myers Squibb, the manufacturer of a nationally marketed prescription
drug called Plavix. The plaintiffs had not bought Plavix in California; neither had they used or suffered any harm
from the drug there. Still, the California Supreme Court thought it could exercise jurisdiction because Bristol-Myers
Squibb sold Plavix in California and was defending there against identical claims brought by the State’s residents.
This Court disagreed, holding that the exercise of jurisdiction violated the Fourteenth Amendment. In Ford’s view,
the same must be true here. Each of these plaintiffs, like the plaintiffs in Bristol-Myers, alleged injury from a
particular item (a car, a pill) that the defendant had sold outside the forum State. Ford reads Bristol-Myers to
preclude jurisdiction when that is true, even if the defendant regularly sold “the same kind of product” in the State.

But that reading misses the point of our decision. We found jurisdiction improper in Bristol-Myers because the
forum State, and the defendant’s activities there, lacked any connection to the plaintiffs’ claims. See Bristol-Myers,
137 S.Ct. at 1781 (“What is needed—and what is missing here—is a connection between the forum and the specific
claims at issue”). The plaintiffs, the Court explained, were not residents of California. They had not been prescribed
Plavix in California. They had not ingested Plavix in California. And they had not sustained their injuries in
California. In short, the plaintiffs were engaged in forum-shopping—suing in California because it was thought
plaintiff-friendly, even though their cases had no tie to the State. That is not at all true of the cases before us. Yes,
Ford sold the specific products in other States, as Bristol-Myers Squibb had. But here, the plaintiffs are residents of
the forum States. They used the allegedly defective products in the forum States. And they suffered injuries when
those products malfunctioned in the forum States. In sum, each of the plaintiffs brought suit in the most natural State
—based on an “affiliation between the forum and the underlying controversy, principally, [an] activity or an
occurrence that t[ook] place” there. Bristol-Myers, 137 S.Ct. at 1780. So Bristol-Myers does not bar jurisdiction.

Ford falls back on Walden as its last resort. In that case, a Georgia police officer working at an Atlanta airport
searched, and seized money from, two Nevada residents before they embarked on a flight to Las Vegas. The victims
of the search sued the officer in Nevada, arguing that their alleged injury (their inability to use the seized money)
occurred in the State in which they lived. This Court held the exercise of jurisdiction in Nevada improper even
though “the plaintiff[s] experienced [the] effect[s]” of the officer’s conduct there. 571 U.S. at 290. According to
Ford, our ruling shows that a plaintiff’s residence and place of injury can never support jurisdiction. And without
those facts, Ford concludes, the basis for jurisdiction crumbles here as well.

But Walden has precious little to do with the cases before us. In Walden, only the plaintiffs had any contacts with the
State of Nevada; the defendant-officer had never taken any act to “form a contact” of his own. The officer had
“never traveled to, conducted activities within, contacted anyone in, or sent anything or anyone to Nevada.” So to
use the language of our doctrinal test: He had not “purposefully avail[ed himself] of the privilege of conducting
activities” in the forum State. Hanson, 357 U.S., at 253. Because that was true, the Court had no occasion to address
the necessary connection between a defendant’s in-state activity and the plaintiff’s claims. But here, Ford has a
veritable truckload of contacts with Montana and Minnesota, as it admits.

The only issue is whether those contacts are related enough to the plaintiffs’ suits. As to that issue, so what if (as
Walden held) the place of a plaintiff’s injury and residence cannot create a defendant’s contact with the forum State?
Those places still may be relevant in assessing the link between the defendant’s forum contacts and the plaintiff’s
suit—including its assertions of who was injured where. And indeed, that relevance is a key part of Bristol-Myers’
reasoning. See 137 S.Ct. at 1782 (finding a lack of “connection” in part because the “plaintiffs are not California
residents and do not claim to have suffered harm in that State”). One of Ford’s own favorite cases thus refutes its
appeal to the other.

Here, resident-plaintiffs allege that they suffered in-state injury because of defective products that Ford extensively
promoted, sold, and serviced in Montana and Minnesota. For all the reasons we have given, the connection between
the plaintiffs’ claims and Ford’s activities in those States—or otherwise said, the “relationship among the defendant,
the forums, and the litigation”—is close enough to support specific jurisdiction. The judgments of the Montana and
Minnesota Supreme Courts are therefore affirmed.
It is so ordered.