Maintaining and asserting objections to personal jurisdiction has been one of the more difficult issues in the law of most jurisdictions for years. Thursday morning, the Illinois Supreme Court clarified an issue of jurisdictional law which has divided the Appellate Courts with its unanimous decision in BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP v. Mitchell.

In Illinois, preserving objections to the court’s jurisdiction over your person is governed by Section 2-301 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 735 ILCS 5/2-301. The statute says that if you want to challenge personal jurisdiction, before doing anything else (other than a motion for extension of time to answer), you have to file “a motion to dismiss the entire proceeding or any cause of action involving in the proceeding” or “a motion to quash service of process.” If the party messes it up:

That party waives all objections to the court’s jurisdiction over the party’s person.

So here’s the issue: what does “all” mean? Are orders entered before the defendant appeared now validated, or does the waiver only operate as to future orders?

The Supreme Court held that the waiver is prospective only.

The plaintiff filed a complaint in foreclosure in 2009. According to the special process server’s affidavit, the summons and complaint was served by substituted service by leaving it with defendant’s daughter at the residence. The suit continued, and in the summer of 2010, the court entered an order of default and a judgment of foreclosure and sale. A judicial sale was held in September 2010, and the court entered an order confirming the sale in September 2011.

In October 2011, the defendant finally appeared, moving to vacate the order confirming the sale. The defendant said she’d never been served with the complaint. Later, she withdrew that motion and moved to quash the order of sale, or in the alternative, for relief from the judgment under Section 2-1401 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Once again, the motion was based squarely on faulty service.

Opposing the motion, the plaintiff once again attached the affidavit of service, claiming that the summons and complaint had been left with the defendant’s daughter.   One problem, the defendant responded: she didn’t have a daughter and didn’t know anybody by the name listed in the affidavit of service.

The circuit court refused to quash the sale. On appeal, the plaintiff acknowledged that the service was faulty, but argued that the defendant had validated the sale by filing a motion to vacate the sale, rather than one to dismiss the action or quash service, as required by Section 5/2-301. The Appellate Court agreed and affirmed.

In an opinion by Justice Kilbride, the Supreme Court reversed.

The Supreme Court had dealt with the waiver issue once before. In In re Marriage of Verdung, the court held that submission to the jurisdiction of the court operates prospectively only. An appearance is “not to be considered as giving the court original jurisdiction to enter the judgment,” the Court held; “doing so deprives the defendant of his day in court.”

But Verdung had been decided under an earlier version of Section 2-301. At the time, the statute had merely provided that anything other than a motion to dismiss or quash was “a general appearance.” The legislature added the language providing that “all” objections to jurisdiction were waived in 2000. The plaintiff argued that the amendment had effectively overruled Verdung.

As recently as 2010, the Fifth District had held that the amendment merely codified the prospective-only rule of Verdung. The language of the statute wasn’t definitive one way or the other, the Court found.  Since the statute was ambiguous, the Court turned to the legislative history. The Court quoted a prominent state Senator as describing the 2000 amendment as “a cleanup. It is designed to prevent an unknowing waiver.” The Court observed that there was no indication in the record that the legislature intended to overturn then-existing law in 2000, and interpreting the amendment to change the law would mean that the 2000 amendment – intended to help parties avoid unknowing waiver – actually had the effect of making the law more harsh. Therefore, the Court reaffirmed Verdung and held that when a party fails to preserve personal jurisdiction objections in either of the ways set forth in Section 2-301, the waiver operates prospectively only.

Since that necessarily meant that the orders entered before the defendant’s appearance were entered without personal jurisdiction, the Court vacated them all, reversing the judgment.

The Court concluded with an unusual step: an invitation to the legislature to get involved. The legislature had amended Section 2-301 in 2000 in order to make preserving personal jurisdiction objections easier. The defendant had waived her personal jurisdiction objections despite being represented by counsel. If that were possible, “it is almost certain that pro se defendants will have difficulty in preserving their objections to personal jurisdiction under the amended section 2-301(a).”

It will be interesting to see whether the legislature responds to the unanimous invitation of the Illinois Supreme Court to try again with Section 2-301.

Image courtesy of Flickr by umjanedoan (no changes).