Key Points

  • The Third Department unanimously affirmed dismissal of a Princeton student's defamation suit against a Cornell student for lack of personal jurisdiction.
  • The court held that the defendant retained her parents' Washington State domicile while attending Cornell because the undisputed proof showed she did not intend to make New York her permanent home.
  • The court declined to extend CPLR 301 general jurisdiction to the ordinary residential and academic activities of an undergraduate student.
  • CPLR 302(a)(2) and (3) exclude defamation claims, and CPLR 302(a)(1) did not apply because the statements arose from a university disciplinary investigation, not a New York business transaction.
  • The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying jurisdictional discovery, because none of the facts sought would have changed the jurisdictional analysis.

A New York appeals court ruled Thursday that a Cornell University student could not be sued in New York by a Princeton University student who said she defamed him during a Princeton disciplinary investigation, holding that living in the state to attend college did not make her subject to its courts.

A five-judge panel of the Appellate Division, Third Department, unanimously affirmed the dismissal of the suit for lack of personal jurisdiction. Presiding Justice Garry wrote for the court, and Justices Clark, Aarons, Reynolds Fitzgerald and Ryba concurred. The plaintiff and defendant appear in the decision under the pseudonyms John Doe and Jane Roe.

The decision holds that an out-of-state undergraduate who lives in New York while enrolled at a college in the state keeps her family's home-state domicile unless there is evidence she meant to stay. The panel also refused to treat ordinary student life as the kind of continuous presence that lets New York courts hear any claim against a nonresident, and it applied the rule that two subsections of the state's long-arm statute exclude defamation claims.

Doe, then a Princeton undergraduate, brought the action in 2023, when Roe was an undergraduate at Cornell. He alleged that Roe, while enrolled and present at Cornell, defamed him during a virtual disciplinary investigation that Princeton conducted into acts that had occurred on the Princeton campus. He served her in Washington, D.C., where she was taking part in a college internship program.

Roe moved to dismiss before answering, arguing among other things that New York courts lacked jurisdiction over her. Justice Elizabeth Aherne of State Supreme Court in Tompkins County granted the motion in an order entered March 24, 2025, finding that Roe had kept the State of Washington domicile of her parents while attending Cornell and that New York's long-arm statute did not apply. Doe appealed.

The first question was general jurisdiction. Under CPLR 301, the court wrote, the bases for that power include physical presence in the state at the time of service, domicile or consent. Domicile, quoting the Court of Appeals, "requires bodily presence in a place with an intent to make it a fixed and permanent home," and "[a]n existing domicile is assumed to continue until a new one is acquired."

Roe's ties to Washington State were undisputed, the court found. Her parents remained domiciled there, she returned during academic breaks, she kept most of her personal property there and she remained financially dependent on her parents. When the suit was filed, she did not intend to live permanently in New York and expected to move to Washington, D.C., after graduation.

"In opposition, plaintiff has identified no evidence demonstrating that defendant intended New York to become her permanent home," Presiding Justice Garry wrote.

Doe argued in the alternative that Roe's activities in New York subjected her to general jurisdiction even without domicile. He relied on decisions that reached nondomiciled individuals who kept up extensive and continuing business activities in the state, including the First Department's 1976 ruling in ABKCO Industries v. Lennon.

The panel rejected that comparison. "Defendant's attendance at a New York university, without more, did not constitute the type of continuous commercial or professional presence/activity contemplated by those authorities," the court held, adding that "we decline plaintiff's invitation to extend CPLR 301 to encompass the ordinary residential and academic activities of an undergraduate college student."

Doe fared no better seeking specific jurisdiction under CPLR 302, the long-arm statute. The court noted that Doe's only cause of action sounds in defamation and that subsections (a)(2) and (a)(3) of the statute "expressly exclude such claims," citing the Court of Appeals' 2012 decision in SPCA of Upstate New York v. American Working Collie Association.

Subsection (a)(1), which contains no such exclusion, did not help either, the panel said, although Doe had not pressed it directly on appeal. That provision requires purposeful business activity in the state and a substantial relationship between that activity and the claim. Here, the court wrote, the statements "arose from defendant's participation in a university disciplinary investigation, not from any business transaction conducted in New York."

The court also upheld the trial judge's refusal to let Doe take jurisdictional discovery. A plaintiff need only make a "sufficient start" to earn such discovery, the panel said, but it is not required when the inquiry would not change the analysis.

Doe had sought information about how long Roe lived on or near the Cornell campus, how often and how long she traveled home to Washington State, the length of her internship in Washington, D.C., and her voter registration and identification cards. Even accepting Doe's assumptions about what that discovery would show, the court wrote, "none of the identified facts would have been sufficient to demonstrate defendant's intent to establish New York as her permanent domicile."

The panel said it had considered Doe's remaining arguments, to the extent they were properly before it, and found them without merit. It affirmed the order with costs.

Lawyers for Doe included Jessica N. Meyers of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP in New York City. Roe was represented by Thomas S. D'Antonio of Hodgson Russ LLP in Rochester.

In a footnote, the court noted that Doe "has indeed sued defendant in Washington State for defamation, asserting that she is domiciled there," in a 2025 action in Washington Superior Court in Spokane County, Docket No. 25204786-32.