Longines-Wittnauer Watch Co. v. Barnes & Reinecke, Inc.

In the three cases under review—one sounding in contract and two in tort—we are called upon to decide whether the courts of this State acquired personal jurisdiction, under our “ long-arm ” statute (CPLR 302), over foreign corporations not “ doing business ” here in the traditional sense. Since there are several questions of law common to all three cases, we discuss such questions generally, at the outset, before undertaking a more particularized consideration of the cases themselves.

It is exceedingly clear that common-law principles of jurisdiction were early imported into the jurisprudence…