Game-Changing Opinion On Venue From Missouri Supreme Court

Bexis is known to say that nothing good ever comes out of Missouri, but the Missouri Supreme Court has proven him wrong. We have long made exceptions to Bexis' proclamation for Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, and Kansas City barbeque, and we can now add to that list the Missouri Supreme Court's new opinion in State ex rel. Johnson & Johnson v. Burlison, No. SC96704, 2019 WL 581175 (Mo. Feb. 13, 2019), where the Missouri Supreme Court took another step toward limiting the blatant forum shopping and venue abuse to which Missouri practitioners have become accustomed.

The controversy arises from Missouri's unique and permissive joinder rules, which have been widely used to pile scores of non-resident plaintiffs into St. Louis City (which is different from St. Louis County) by joining their claims with those of one St. Louis City resident. You can read our take on the issue here. As you might expect, we have bemoaned this practice as unjustified and unfair.

The Burlison opinion is a game changer for the better. In Burlison, one St. Louis City resident filed an action in St. Louis City along with dozens of non-Missouri plaintiffs against New Jersey and Delaware defendants. The defendants filed motions to sever the non-residents and transfer their cases to other venues, which the court denied. Id. at *1. After multiple amended petitions (and an equal number of overruled objections to venue), the court set one plaintiff for trial—a resident of St. Louis County (which again is different from the City). After yet another overruled objection to venue in St. Louis City, the defendants petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition arguing that venue in St. Louis City was improper. Id. at *2.

The Supreme Court agreed and held that Missouri's permissive joinder rules could not trump the standard venue rules. That is to say, plaintiffs who cannot themselves establish venue in St. Louis City cannot enter that forum through the backdoor by joining with one St. Louis City resident. The opinion's discussion started strong:

The central issue in this case is whether permissive joinder of separate claims may extend venue to a county when, absent joinder, venue in that county would not otherwise be proper for each claim. It cannot and does not. This is evidenced not only by our Court's rules but also nearly 40 years of this Court's precedent.

Id. at *3 (emphasis added). The plaintiff had argued that the venue statute (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 508.010) does not dictate...