Plaintiffs Elizabeth and Cale Putnam sued Premier Parks, LLC and EPR Properties in federal court in Massachusetts following the death of their five-year-old son, Anthony, who was crushed by an unsecured Murphy bed at the Hotel Valcartier in Quebec, Canada. The Putnams alleged that Premier operated the hotel and that EPR owned the property, claiming both defendants regularly marketed to and booked rooms for Massachusetts residents. Both defendants moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, submitting sworn declarations denying any direct involvement in the hotel's operations, marketing, or bookings in the United States. The district court dismissed the entire complaint with prejudice, denying the plaintiffs' request for jurisdictional discovery. The First Circuit reviewed the record to determine if the plaintiffs had proffered sufficient facts to establish that the defendants had minimum contacts with Massachusetts.
The First Circuit applied the prima facie standard, accepting the plaintiffs' evidence as true unless it directly contradicted undisputed facts from the defendants. Regarding Premier Parks, the court found a genuine conflict between the defendant's sworn declarations and public evidence. Plaintiffs submitted documents showing Premier's CEO, Kieran Burke, listed as the head of the operating entity, alongside LinkedIn posts and job listings implying Premier employees worked at the hotel. The court noted that Burke's declaration, asserting personal knowledge of the operating entity's activities while serving as CEO of both Premier and the operator, created 'serious ambiguity' about the intermingling of the two entities. This ambiguity justified jurisdictional discovery to determine if Premier was effectively operating the hotel and marketing to Massachusetts residents. In contrast, the court found no such conflict regarding EPR Properties. While plaintiffs pointed to public statements about EPR acquiring the property, these did not contradict EPR's affidavit stating it owned the property only through a subsidiary and was not involved in marketing or bookings. The court held that plaintiffs failed to allege facts showing EPR transacted business in Massachusetts, and their discovery requests were too skeletal to warrant an order.
The case will proceed against Premier Parks, LLC, with the district court instructed to allow jurisdictional discovery focused on Premier's relationship with the operating entity and its involvement in marketing and booking rooms for Massachusetts residents. The dismissal against EPR Properties is affirmed but modified to be without prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs may potentially refile against EPR if they can later establish jurisdiction, though the current record does not support it. The decision clarifies that public statements and corporate intermingling can create the necessary factual disputes to permit discovery in personal jurisdiction cases.