Rule 4.4.Service upon persons in actions for acts done in this state or having an effect in this state

Every lawsuit needs a court with power over the defendant, and that gets harder to establish once the defendant is not living in Indiana, has left the state, or cannot be located. Rule 4.4(A) answers that problem for Indiana courts. It applies to three kinds of defendants — someone who is not an Indiana resident, someone who was a resident but has left, and someone whose residence cannot be determined — and it lists the specific acts, done by that person or an agent, that submit them to the jurisdiction of Indiana courts for a lawsuit arising out of those acts.

The listed acts cover a wide range of Indiana connections: doing business in the state; causing personal injury or property damage through conduct that happened here; causing injury or damage here through conduct that happened elsewhere, if the person regularly does business in Indiana, engages in an ongoing course of conduct connected to the state, or draws meaningful revenue from goods or services used or provided here; supplying or agreeing to supply goods or services in Indiana; owning, using, or holding an interest in Indiana real property; agreeing to insure or act as surety for a person, property, or risk located in Indiana; having lived as a married couple in Indiana — even after later leaving — for purposes of alimony, custody, child support, or property-settlement obligations, so long as the other spouse still lives in the state; and abusing, harassing, disturbing the peace of, or violating a protective order protecting someone in Indiana, whether the conduct happened here or is part of an ongoing pattern reaching into the state from outside it. On top of that specific list, the rule closes with a catch-all: an Indiana court may exercise jurisdiction on any basis the Indiana or United States Constitution allows, even beyond the eight enumerated acts.

Once jurisdiction exists under this rule, section B points to the mechanics: the person is served the same way any individual, hard-to-find resident, organization, or in rem defendant would be served under Rules 4.1, 4.5, 4.6, or 4.9, whichever fits. If none of those work, the rule treats the person as having appointed the Indiana Secretary of State to accept service on their behalf, following the procedure in Rule 4.10.

Sections C through E give a court that has jurisdiction the power to send the case elsewhere anyway, when a different forum would serve the case better. A judge weighing that decision can look at whether the parties are subject to jurisdiction in the alternative forum, how convenient that forum is for the parties and witnesses, how differently the two forums’ conflict-of-law rules would treat the case, and any other factor bearing on a fair and convenient place of trial. But a court cannot grant that kind of stay or dismissal until every defendant who has been properly brought into the case signs a written stipulation agreeing to submit to jurisdiction in the other forum and to give up any statute-of-limitations defense they would otherwise have there — a safeguard that keeps a plaintiff from being sent to a forum only to find the case time-barred once they arrive. If a defendant later breaks that promise, the court can undo the stay or dismissal and pick the case back up as though the order had never been entered, and the court keeps ongoing authority over the case for that purpose.