D.C. Circuit Rejects Personal Jurisdiction Over Foreign Companies in Dispute Centered Abroad

Summary

On August 7, 2026, in Gligorov v. Nation of Brunei, the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed the dismissal, for lack of personal jurisdiction, of civil RICO and tortious-interference claims brought by a Slovenian businessman against three non-U.S. corporate defendants allegedly affiliated with the Nation of Brunei. The panel also held that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying jurisdictional discovery.[1]

The decision is the D.C. Circuit’s first to apply Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization (2025) to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(k)(2).[2] Rule 4(k)(2) authorizes service of process over defendants in federal-question cases who are not subject to jurisdiction in any state’s courts of general jurisdiction, so long as exercising jurisdiction is consistent with the United States Constitution and laws. In Fuld, the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment does not impose the more rigid minimum-contacts requirement set by the Fourteenth Amendment, because the interstate-federalism concerns that limit state-court jurisdiction do not apply to federal courts. Fuld, however, did not announce a test for establishing personal jurisdiction under the Fifth Amendment, and instead upheld jurisdiction under a federal jurisdiction-granting statute. In Gligorov, the parties agreed that the exercise of jurisdiction must be reasonable and supported by a meaningful nexus to the United States. The D.C. Circuit assumed without deciding that this was the correct test, and applying it, concluded that jurisdiction would be unreasonable under the totality of the circumstances—including that the defendants’ U.S. presence did not give fair notice that the defendants could be sued for this non-U.S. plaintiff’s overseas injuries.

Key takeaways for non-U.S. companies and sovereign-linked enterprises include:

• A defendant’s U.S. business presence—in Gligorov, the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Bel Air Hotel—does not, standing alone, make it reasonable for a U.S. court to adjudicate claims by a foreign plaintiff concerning conduct and injuries abroad that are unrelated to the defendant’s U.S. operations.
• A plaintiff seeking to use a foreign sovereign as a jurisdictional anchor under RICO must first establish jurisdiction over the sovereign through the FSIA. The FSIA generally provides the sole basis for jurisdiction over a sovereign in U.S. courts. In Gligorov, the plaintiff’s attempt to use Brunei as a RICO anchor defendant failed because he had not served Brunei under the FSIA and pleaded no applicable FSIA exception.
• Rule 4(k)(2) is a procedural rule, not an act of Congress. In Fuld, the exercise of personal jurisdiction was supported by Congress’s deliberate choice to let American victims of terrorism sue in U.S. courts. Rule 4(k)(2) does not reflect any similar policy choice. Although the Rule can authorize service of process, plaintiffs relying on it will likely need to independently show a meaningful connection between the dispute and the United States to satisfy the Fifth Amendment.

Gligorov gives non-U.S. corporations grounds for early dismissal when any U.S. operations are unrelated to the alleged wrongdoing. The decision also signals that Fuld’s more flexible standard will not necessarily expand jurisdiction in ordinary commercial cases.

Background to the Dispute

The dispute arose from a Slovenian businessman’s work for Brunei. The plaintiff alleged that Bruneian officials retained him for $250,000 to provide information about alleged wrongful and illegal acts by other Brunei government officials. He delivered his findings in 2016. Gligorov alleged that the officials then refused to pay him and conspired to destroy his reputation and business—including by procuring an INTERPOL “Blue Notice” that caused him to be stopped at international borders.

Brunei itself, individual Bruneian officials, and the Brunei Investment Agency were named as defendants but never served. The only defendants before the court were three corporate entities: Audley Property Management Company Limited, Seven Properties AG, and The Dorchester Group, LLC. The complaint alleged that Bruneian officials moved money through Seven Properties' accounts in Zurich and Audley's in London, and that the Dorchester Group's officers and agents had knowledge of and cooperated in the use of London accounts. Gligorov sought to use Brunei's embassy presence as the RICO anchor that would justify the court’s exercise of jurisdiction over the companies.

The complaint also alleged that all three corporate defendants maintained “safe houses” and “safe rooms” that agents of the Brunei government used for meetings with terrorist organizations and their proxies, and that Dorchester kept such rooms at The Beverly Hills Hotel and the Bel Air Hotel. A private investigator’s declaration identified four meetings of Bruneian officials at The Beverly Hills Hotel between November 2015 and August 2019. But the declaration never mentioned safe rooms or placed any corporate defendant at those meetings.

The D.C. Circuit’s Decision

The panel identified two possible avenues for personal jurisdiction over the corporate defendants: RICO and Rule 4(k)(2). Neither was sufficient to exercise jurisdiction here.

The RICO Route and the FSIA

Section 1965(a) of RICO requires at least one defendant that resides, is found, has an agent, or transacts its affairs in the district before Section 1965(b) can reach other defendants. Gligorov’s proposed “anchor” defendant was the sovereign nation of Brunei, allegedly present in the district through its Washington embassy.

That theory ran squarely into the FSIA, however. The FSIA generally provides the sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in U.S. courts. The statute confers personal jurisdiction only where an FSIA exception applies and service has been made in compliance with the statute’s terms. Gligorov conceded that he had not served Brunei, and he pleaded no applicable FSIA exception. The FSIA thus foreclosed RICO as a basis for personal jurisdiction on these facts.

The Rule 4(k)(2) Route

Without RICO, Gligorov had to establish personal jurisdiction over the corporate defendants through Rule 4(k)(2). In Omni Capital International, Ltd. v. Rudolf Wolff & Co., 484 U.S. 97 (1987), the Supreme Court observed that foreign defendants in a federal-question case could escape suit entirely where no federal statute or state long-arm statute authorized service of process. The Court invited Congress or the federal courts’ Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure to address the gap. The Standing Committee responded in 1993 with Rule 4(k)(2), which provides that, for a claim arising under federal law, service establishes personal jurisdiction over a defendant not subject to jurisdiction in any state’s courts of general jurisdiction, so long as exercising jurisdiction is consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.

In Gligorov, the D.C. Circuit observed that Rule 4(k)(2)’s procedural origins cut against the plaintiff, though the panel ultimately resolved the case on the standard the parties jointly proposed. Unlike the statute at issue in Fuld—the Antiterrorism Act, where the Court observed that Congress deliberately tied jurisdiction to specified conduct bearing a meaningful relationship to the United States and to American victims of terrorism—Rule 4(k)(2) is a court-promulgated procedural device. It does not reflect any substantive federal policy or congressional judgment that would weigh in favor of exercising jurisdiction.

Before Fuld, the D.C. Circuit had held that the Fifth Amendment imposed the same minimum-contacts limits on federal courts as the Fourteenth Amendment imposes on state courts. That rule was no longer viable after Fuld. The Fourteenth Amendment’s minimum-contacts requirement rests in part on interstate-federalism concerns—ensuring that States do not reach beyond their coequal-sovereign boundaries. Those concerns do not apply to the Federal government, which alone possesses nationwide and extraterritorial authority. For these reasons, the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment permits a “more flexible” jurisdictional inquiry, but it declined to prescribe a specific jurisdictional test. Instead, it observed that whatever the Fifth Amendment’s outer limits, the Antiterrorism Act did not transgress them because the statute tied jurisdiction to predicate conduct bearing a meaningful relationship to the United States. That left the governing standard uncertain for cases—like Gligorov—where jurisdiction rests on a rule rather than a statute.

The Reasonableness Analysis

Before the D.C. Circuit, the parties agreed on the governing standard under Fuld for exercising personal jurisdiction over the corporate defendants: the exercise of personal jurisdiction must be “reasonable” and the case must have a “meaningful nexus to the United States.” Applying that agreed-upon standard, the plaintiff fell short.

First, Gligorov had no cognizable interest in litigating in the United States. He was not a U.S. national or resident, did not own or operate a U.S. business, and alleged no significant U.S. business ties.

Second, Gligorov identified no U.S. sovereign interest in the dispute. He cited the United States’ “profound interest” in curbing terrorism financing and protecting whistleblowers, but the alleged misconduct occurred almost entirely overseas, arose from a foreign consultant’s contract with a foreign government, and allegedly harmed a foreign business.

Third, Gligorov could not establish that the burden on the corporate defendants would be low enough to outweigh the other two factors and render the exercise of jurisdiction reasonable. Two of the corporate defendants had no alleged U.S. offices, property or business apart from an “information and belief” assertion that unidentified representatives attended one California meeting. That presence was “far too little to constitute the type of ‘meaningful relationship’ [between the United States and Audley or Seven Properties]” that could “reasonably justify an exercise of federal-court jurisdiction over these foreign defendants that the Political Branches have not endorsed.” The court emphasized that “great care and reserve should be exercised when extending our notions of personal jurisdiction into the international field.” The third defendant’s hotel business was a more substantial U.S. presence, but that presence did not give fair notice that the company could be sued by a foreign businessman who is not alleged to have set foot in its hotels, for injuries suffered abroad, based on alleged conduct unrelated to its hotel operations. Gligorov thus sits within a broader pattern of U.S. judicial skepticism toward extraterritorial assertions of jurisdiction over foreign parties.

Jurisdictional Discovery

The court also affirmed that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying jurisdictional discovery. As a threshold matter, Gligorov failed to develop any argument on appeal that his requested discovery would enable him to show jurisdiction was reasonable, offering only conclusory references. Beyond that, the panel held that even if he could prove a conspiratorial meeting at the hotel, that would not supply a material U.S. connection to what the court called a “pervasively foreign” conspiracy. Jurisdictional discovery requires a good-faith, factually anchored basis to believe it will establish jurisdiction. Plaintiffs cannot simply “take a stab at jurisdictional theories that lack any factual anchor in the complaint’s allegations.”

Implications

A plaintiff must connect its claims to the defendant’s U.S. presence. A marquee hotel may show that a foreign group does business in the United States. But courts applying Gligorov will require a showing that the U.S. presence bears a meaningful relationship to the plaintiff’s claims or to a concrete U.S. sovereign interest. A complaint should identify where the injury occurred, what U.S. person or property was affected, and which domestic act contributed to the alleged wrong.

The statutory basis for service of process remains critical. Rule 4(k)(2) is a gap-filling procedural rule that can authorize service, but it is not an expression of national policy. Plaintiffs relying on the Rule will likely need to independently demonstrate a meaningful U.S. nexus. By contrast, a federal statute that expressly authorizes nationwide or extraterritorial service may embody a congressional judgment that the specified conduct bears a meaningful relationship to the United States—easing the plaintiff’s burden. Defense counsel should examine whether any such statutory requirements are satisfied. In RICO cases, for example, that means determining whether the plaintiff can obtain jurisdiction over an “anchor” defendant.

Jurisdictional discovery can be defeated by showing it would be futile. In seeking jurisdictional discovery, plaintiffs must show how the requested materials would change the reasonableness analysis. Requests aimed only at identifying U.S. assets, customers or affiliates may be denied if those facts would not alter the reasonableness analysis.

Gligorov does not alter the separate rules for enforcing arbitration awards against foreign states. Although the U.S. hotels at the center of the case are the kind of sovereign-linked assets award creditors often target, the decision addresses only new merits claims against a sovereign’s alleged corporate affiliates. Jurisdiction to recognize an award against the state itself runs through the FSIA—generally requiring an applicable immunity exception and proper service—and execution against particular assets remains a distinct, asset-specific inquiry under Sections 1610 and 1611 of the FSIA.