It does not matter where the complaint originated from as long as the complaint against BFL has legal merit. The matter would be dealt with in jurisdiction of Johnson County or at the state level depending on which office moved against the company as BFL has a physical presence here. If they do not have a registered agent handling their legal matters, then BFL would be served at their physical location.
Place incorporated does not protect the company from legal matters filed against their physical location. If their registered agent (often a lawyer) is located in a different state than the physical location then the company will have to find legal council in the jurisdiction of the physical location where the legal action was brought forth.
It seem you have a better understand of these procedures. What would happen if multiple unknown individuals served BFL from all over the globe? Would they combine them all in one suit?
I am not sure what would happen then. You are talking international law, jurisdiction of sovereign nations, and treaties. Interesting question though. I guess it would boil down to the laws of the nation the BFL representative and the company itself was operating in at the time of the legal matter in question arose. I have seen some incidents regarding negligence where the individual and the company were named as co-defendants.
Combining? I am only aware of a couple of types of combining. - Enough civil suits are filed on a matter that it is turned into a class action lawsuit (example defective product or product with negative side effects causing the consumers harm. See them all the time advertised on tv.) A plaintiff can join an existing lawsuit if there is action for cause and the complaint is identical in nature (Only seen this happen on state versus federal cases.) The defendant can petition the judge to combine multiple lawsuits into one (Saw Microsoft pull this one off in speculation that company was stalling for time and saving on legal expenses).
In response to jesse11,
I am talking matters of state versus a company regarding consumer and potential criminal; not individual versus company in a civil tort.
If you as a consumer living in Florida (hypothetically speaking here) decided to sue my company (which is registered and physically located in Kansas) in a Florida courtroom. More or less you can try and sue. My attorney would file a motion for a change of venue bringing the case up to Kansas. Which means you as the individual would be forced to hire new legal council as the majority of law practitioners in Florida are not licensed to practice law in Kansas. While you are scrambling for another lawyer and the money to hire him, another motion to dismiss would be filed on the grounds that the case was brought forth in a jurisdiction that my company is not registered in, or physically doing business in, or has conducted any business transactions to. If it sticks you are back to square one having to file all over again. And to add insult to injury, I'd petition the court to make you pay my company's legal fees for inconveniencing my company. I can see BFL doing something like this if it got ugly.
So if you want it to stick, you take case to where they reside. Harder to pull legal trickery that way. Truth of the matter is most civil tort cases never make it to an actual court room. I have heard percentages as high as 80 to 85% of all cases never see the light of day. Most are referred to mediation or are settled our of court so nothing enters public record. Most settlements are for x amount of cash, court fees with the defendant moving on to conduct business as usual not having to admit guilt.
This is what most likely would happen if an individual sued BFL. Settlement with the records sealed afterwards. Even if you sued BFL and managed to drag them in court to air out their dirty laundry, they would just have the records sealed afterwards preventing the plaintiff and prying eyes from disclosing to the public BFLs inner-workings and dirty laundry. Furthermore a smart lawyer for BFL would ask the judge to place a gag order on the case (most likely on the grounds of trade secrets) so the plaintiff and all other parties in the court room could not say anything to the public during the court case either.
The only state that I am aware of allows you to go after someone regardless of where they are located in the United States is California. Apparently you can sue anyone there. Seems there is no requirement on the defendant ever having to be in the state, visited the state, conduct business in the state, or even know that California exists for a lawsuit to go forward there.
