Burdick v. Superior Court

Opinion

FYBEL, J.

Introduction

In this writ proceeding, we address whether, in a lawsuit for defamation, a nonresident defendant is subject to personal jurisdiction in California on the ground that, while in his or her state of residence, the defendant posted (and removed) allegedly defamatory statements about the plaintiff on the defendant’s publicly available Facebook page.

We hold that posting defamatory statements about a person on a Facebook page, while knowing that person resides in the forum state, is insufficient in itself to create the minimum contacts necessary to support specific…