444 U.S. 286 (U.S. Supreme Court 1980)
World-Wide Volkswagen v. Woodson is a cornerstone of modern personal jurisdiction doctrine.
Whether the Due Process Clause permits an Oklahoma court to exercise specific personal jurisdiction over a New York retailer and a New York regional distributor whose only connection to Oklahoma is that a vehicle they sold in New York was involved in an accident in Oklahoma after the purchaser unilaterally drove it there.
Under International Shoe, a forum may exercise personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant only if the defendant has minimum contacts with the forum state such that maintaining the suit does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. The critical foreseeability is not that a product may enter the forum, but that the defendant's conduct and connection with the forum are such that it should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there. The unilateral activity of a third party cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum. A state does not exceed its powers if it asserts jurisdiction over a defendant that delivers products into the stream of commerce with the expectation they will be purchased in the forum, but mere foreseeability of a product's travel, without purposeful availment, is insufficient.
No. Oklahoma lacked personal jurisdiction over Seaway and World-Wide. The assertion of jurisdiction violated due process because those defendants had no purposeful contacts with Oklahoma and could not reasonably anticipate being haled into court there.
World-Wide Volkswagen crystallizes the purposeful availment requirement and the proper understanding of foreseeability in personal jurisdiction. It protects defendants from being haled into distant forums based solely on the unilateral actions of consumers and the inherent mobility of products. The case also plants the seed for the stream-of-commerce analysis, later elaborated in Asahi and J. McIntyre, and frames the reasonableness factors that Burger King formally operationalizes. For law students, it is a go-to authority for minimum contacts, foreseeability, and the limits of state judicial power grounded in due process and federalism.