The Washington Posts’ Robert Barnes quotes Professor Jeffrey Fisher’s arguments before the Supreme Court this term in the case of OBB Personenverkeher AG v. Sachs.

Carol Sachs of California bought a Eurail pass from a company in Massachusetts and then was horribly injured in Innsbruck while trying to board a moving train operated by the Austrian national railway.

The question before the Supreme Court on its first day of the new term Monday was whether she could sue for her injuries in American courts.

…

Sachs’s lawyer, Stanford law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher, soldiered on in the face of similar comments from other justices.

“I think there are plenty of cases that support the proposition that when a company markets and sells a product in a jurisdiction,” that implies a right to bring a lawsuit there as well, Fisher said.

…

Fisher said the truth is that there’s not much law to rely on in deciding the issue. “We have none, and they have none,” he said.

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Fisher said Sachs’s purchase of the ticket implied that she would receive “safe passage” abroad. But he said the scope of the issue is much wider.

“The more typical case” would involve international finance and loans, for instance, Fisher said.

“There are many employment cases where United States citizens sign an employment contract or are lured abroad, study abroad programs in the educational sphere, all kinds of situations where a duty is created in this country,” Fisher said. “But then all of the events that the lawsuit turns out to be about happen abroad.”

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