8th Circuit says Hardee’s too late to move suit to Jordan

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled April 28 that a wrongful death lawsuit originating in the Middle East can proceed in Missouri.

The case stems from the 2015 death of a 6-year-old boy who touched a live wire at the indoor playground of a Hardee’s restaurant in Amman, Jordan. The boy’s parents sued Hardee’s parent companies in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, where the chain was then headquartered.

The district court agreed with Hardee’s argument that Jordan was a more appropriate forum and dismissed the case based on the doctrine of forum non conveniens. That ruling, however, came 18 months after the case was filed and just a few weeks after discovery had closed. 

The 8th Circuit said the restaurant should have sought dismissal “within a reasonable time.” The year-and-a-half of litigation demonstrated that the forum wasn’t all that inconvenient, the court said, and ruling otherwise would let defendants “keep an ace up their sleeve by adopting a wait-and-see approach, asserting forum non conveniens only after they have determined that litigation in a U.S. court is going poorly.”

The case is Hersh v. CKE Restaurants Holdings Inc., 19-2794.