Norfolk Southern Tells Justices It Didn’t Consent to Lawsuit

A Pennsylvania law saying that an out-of-state corporation’s Keystone State business registration subjects it to jurisdiction there is an “anachronism” that violates due process, the Norfolk Southern Railway Co. told the US Supreme Court in a brief in a toxic exposure case.

Indeed, the high court should expressly overrule a century-old precedent that allowed such a basis for consent to jurisdiction, a business advocacy group, the Atlantic Legal Foundation, said in a friend of the court brief Monday.

The latest briefs in the case aim to preserve a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling from December 2021 holding the statutory scheme unconstitutional. ...