Evans Cabinet Corp. v. Kitchen Int'l, Inc.

Evans Cabinet Corporation (Evans) (plaintiff) contracted in 2004 with Kitchen International, Inc. (Kitchen) (defendant) in 2004 to provide cabinetry to Kitchen for use in several United States East Coast home sites. Evans was a Georgia corporation, and Kitchen was a Louisiana company with its principal office in Québec, Canada. The cabinets were ordered from Evans at Kitchen’s offices in Québec through a call with Evans’s Georgia offices, and the materials were sent by Evans directly to Kitchen’s construction sites. Kitchen claimed that Kitchen and Evans had entered a second agreement in 2004 to create a showroom in Québec and that Evans sent Kitchen products to be used in the showroom. Evans denied the existence of the showroom agreement. Eventually, disputes arose over the products shipped by Evans to the East Coast projects. Kitchen sued Evans for breach of contract in superior court in Québec. Evans failed to respond or appear in Québec even though it had been properly served and notified. In 2007 a default judgment was entered in Québec against Evans. Evans then filed a case in United States federal district court against Kitchen. Kitchen filed to dismiss Evans’s case on the ground that the Canadian judgment barred the case under res judicata. Evans objected and argued that the Québec court lacked jurisdiction over Evans, so the award was unenforceable. The district court entered summary judgment for Kitchen and found that Evans had several contacts with Québec. Evans appealed, arguing in part that significant disputes still existed concerning its contacts with Québec because affidavits submitted to the district court contained conflicting facts. The district court’s application of both Québec and Massachusetts law was not disputed. The district court ruled that Evans’s contacts with Québec established personal jurisdiction under the long-arm statute, but it did not analyze any fairness factors to determine whether exercising foreign jurisdiction over Evans was constitutionally reasonable.