Action in personam: actor sequitur forum rei principle and its implications

You are sued by someone in a city you have never visited, for a dispute that has nothing to do with that city. You would have to hire a lawyer there, travel there and lose weeks. Most people would call that unfair. Courts have long answered this worry with a Latin rule: the claimant must go to the defendant’s court, not the other way round. Actor sequitur forum rei says exactly that. But the rule is a starting point, not a wall, and this topic shows where it bends.

In two minutes

Actor sequitur forum rei means the plaintiff follows the forum of the defendant: the natural court for a personal action is the one where the defendant lives or carries on business.

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