Dealing With Customers in Texas Leads to Personal Jurisdiction in Texas

Michael Tabasso was a salesman for BearCom Group, Inc., a Garland-based wireless equipment dealer. Tabasso was based out of BearCom’s office in Philadelphia, and was in charge of a sales region that did not include Texas. Nevertheless, the company disciplined Tabasso for attempting to make sales outside of his sales region, including contracting with a Texas company and then referring a portion of that contract to another party at BearCom’s expense. After Tabasso was terminated, he apparently continued to fulfill service requests by BearCom customers and forwarded confidential information to his personal email account. All of that led to BearCom filing suit against Tabasso in Dallas County. Tabasso filed a special appearance, which the district court denied.

On interlocutory appeal, the court of appeals affirmed. BearCom’s pleading raised a plethora of alleged jurisdictional contacts, including contacts with BearCom’s customers in Texas. That pleading shifted the burden to Tabasso to negate each of the alleged jurisdictional contacts, but he did not do so. Instead, the trial court deemed his affidavits to be “not credible in light of the record,” and there was ample evidence of Tabasso’s communications and dealings with those Texas customers. Tabasso also failed to preserve any objections to the trial court’s evidentiary rulings. In light of the entire record, the court of appeals found no abuse of discretion and affirmed the denial of the special appearance.

Tabasso v. BearCom Group, Inc., No. 05-11-01674-CV