Archibald v. Cinerama Hotels

In Archibald v. Cinerama Hotels (1976) 15 Cal.3d 853, the plaintiff, a California resident who had booked reservations in a Hawaiian hotel through an American Express office in Sacramento, undertook to sue the hotel in California for alleged discriminatory rates charged to visitors from the mainland. A motion to quash by the hotel was granted by the trial court, and, although the supporting affidavits were determined on appeal to be inadequate to establish the predicate for such order, the proposition above quoted was nevertheless recognized by the Supreme Court to be the law applicable. The Archibald court went on to say "An analogy occurs in Kenny v. Alaska Airlines, 132 F.Supp. 838. There a federal court held that the defendant airline was not 'doing business' in California by selling tickets through ticket agencies or connecting carriers. The court suggested that subjection to jurisdiction through ticket sales by local carriers or independent contractors 'would present a policy problem of such magnitude that we believe the California courts would hold that such ticket sale activities did not constitute doing business.' (132 F. Supp. at p. 852.) In Miller v. Surf Properties, 4 N.Y.2d 475 176 N.Y.S.2d 318, 151 N.E.2d 874, the New York Court of Appeals held that the activities of an independent New York travel agency, which solicited business and received reservations for many hotels, including a Florida hotel, did not make the Florida hotel amenable to New York process." (Id. at pp. 864-865.) The Supreme Court first acknowledged that assessing how Hawaii's courts would interpret its own class action law was inherently "speculative," but then concluded that such uncertainty did not preclude the court's grant of the forum non conveniens motion: "The existence of unsettled questions of Hawaiian procedure does not compel the trial court to conclude as a matter of law that Hawaii is not a suitable alternative forum. Uncertainties such as this concerning the suitability of the foreign forum have prompted our holding that a court cannot dismiss a suit ... , but can stay that suit: the staying court can resume proceedings if the foreign forum proves unsuitable." (Id. at p. 862.)