Fifth Circuit Rules Texas Has Personal Jurisdiction Over Battery Manufacturer

James Ethridge, a Texas citizen, purchased a Samsung lithium battery from a Wyoming company  on Amazon.  He used the battery to charge an e-cigarette; the battery exploded, causing personal injuries.  Ethridge brought a Texas state court lawsuit against Samsung, a South Korean corporation, with no physical presence in Texas.  The case was later removed to federal court.  Samsung argued that Texas did not have personal jurisdiction over it, under the specific facts of this case, because the battery was not sold directly to a traditional Texas manufacturer.   Instead, Samsung argued that it sold this battery to the “sophisticated and qualified” Wisconsin business in that normally incorporates the battery into a battery pack.  Samsung claimed that it had no control over what happened to the battery in this case, since it was not sold to a Texas business.  The district court agreed, and dismissed the case for lack of personal jurisdiction.

On appeal, the 5th Circuit reversed the dismissal in Etheridge v. Samsung SDI Company, Ltd., 137 F. 4th 309 (5th Cir. 2025).  Establishing personal jurisdiction over a foreign corporation requires 3 things: (1) the corporation must purposefully avail itself of the privileged of doing business in the state by its contacts with the state; (2) the claim must arise out of those purposeful contacts; and (3) the exercise of personal jurisdiction must be fair and reasonable.  The appellate court found that the first and third prongs of the test were clearly established through the continuous contracts with Texas companies Black & Decker, HP and Dell; and the desire to have a Texas court adjudicate the claims of a Texas citizen injured by the product against a corporation large enough to have the ability to litigate in the state.

The second prong was the issue: did Ethridge’s personal injury claim arise out of the purposeful contacts with Texas?  The court discussed the recent Supreme Court ruling in Ford Motor Co v. Mont. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 592 U.S. 351, 359, 141 S.Ct. 1017, 209 L.Ed.2d 225 (2021).  Applying that reasoning, the 5th Circuit noted that Samsung admitted to selling the same lithium batteries to Texas manufacturers, and that there is no reason to believe that the battery that exploded with Ethridge was any different from those batteries.  Nor were the sales to the Texas manufacturers “isolated” or “sporadic.”  Therefore, as in the Ford decision, the same-model-plus-in-state-injury requirement is met with Ethridge’s claim. 

Finally, Samsung also argued that the sales in Texas were to corporations, and since the sale to Ethridge was a consumer sale, his claim did not arise out of Samsung’s contacts with Texas. This argument was rejected as inconsistent with precedent and unworkable.  Plus, Samsung relied heavily upon a 9th Circuit decision in making this “different markets” argument.  (Someone forgot to tell Samsung that you never argue a 9th Circuit decision in the 5th Circuit.-- L.D. Schmidt)