Atlantic Marine Constr. Co. v. U.S. Dist. Court for Western Dist. of Tex.

Atlantic, a Virginia corporation, entered into a construction subcontract with J-Crew, a Texas corporation, including a provision that all disputes between the parties would be litigated in Virginia. When a dispute arose, J-Crew filed suit in the Western District of Texas. Atlantic moved to dismiss, arguing that the forum-selection clause rendered venue “wrong” under 28 U. S. C. 406(a) and “improper” under FRCP 12(b)(3). In the alternative, Atlantic moved to transfer the case to Virginia under 28 U. S. C. 1404(a). The district court denied the motions, reasoning that section 1404(a) is the exclusive mechanism for enforcing a forum-selection clause that points to another federal forum; that Atlantic bore the burden of establishing that transfer would be appropriate; and that the court would consider both public- and private-interest factors, only one of which was the forum-selection clause. The Fifth Circuit agreed. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded. A forum-selection clause may be enforced by a motion to transfer under 1404(a). Section 1406(a) and Rule 12(b)(3) allow dismissal only when venue is “wrong” or “improper.” Whether venue is “wrong” or “improper” depends exclusively on whether the court in which the case was filed satisfies the requirements of 28 U. S. C. 1391. Whether a contract contains a forum-selection clause has no bearing on whether a case falls into a specified district. If a defendant files a 1404(a) motion, a district court should transfer the case unless extraordinary circumstances unrelated to convenience of the parties clearly disfavor a transfer. No such factors were present in this case. The district court improperly placed the burden on Atlantic to prove that transfer to the parties’ contractually preselected forum was appropriate instead of requiring J-Crew, the party acting in violation of the forum-selection clause, to show that public-interest factors overwhelmingly disfavored a transfer and erred in giving weight to the parties’ private interests outside those expressed in the forum-selection clause. Its holding that public interests favored keeping the case in Texas because Texas contract law is more familiar to Texas federal judges than to those in Virginia rested on a mistaken belief that the Virginia federal court would have been required to apply Texas’ choice-of-law rules instead of Virginia’s. View "Atlantic Marine Constr. Co. v. U.S. Dist. Court for Western Dist. of Tex." on Justia Law