Key Points

  • The Nevada Supreme Court, sitting en banc, unanimously affirmed dismissal of Essence USA Inc. for lack of personal jurisdiction in a wrongful-death and products suit over a Care@Home medical-alert device.
  • The court reaffirmed that Nevada applies the pure stream-of-commerce test but held it requires a regular and anticipated flow of products into the state, which proof of a single device does not establish.
  • The court held that attending a business-to-business tradeshow in Nevada can in some circumstances satisfy purposeful availment, but the plaintiffs failed to show their claims arose from or related to Essence USA's CES contacts.
  • The court distinguished Firouzabadi (1994), where the claims arose from contracts signed at a Las Vegas tradeshow, as well as Ford Motor Co. and its own 2025 TikTok decision.
  • The district court certified the dismissal for appeal while claims against reseller Medical Guardian LLC proceeded; the court did not reach whether jurisdiction would be reasonable.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a New Jersey distributor of medical-alert devices cannot be sued in Nevada over the death of a woman whose device allegedly failed to call for help after she fell. The court held that the company's yearly trips to the CES tradeshow in Las Vegas did not connect it closely enough to the family's claims.

The unanimous en banc court affirmed a Clark County district court's order dismissing Essence USA Inc. from a negligence, products liability, warranty and wrongful-death suit brought by the estate and six children of Virginia Rose Pass. Justice Pickering wrote the opinion, joined by Chief Justice Herndon and Justices Parraguirre, Bell, Stiglich, Cadish and Lee.

The decision reaffirms that Nevada follows the "pure" stream-of-commerce test, under which a company can be sued in any state where it expects its products to be sold through national distribution. But the court held that the test still requires proof of a regular flow of products into Nevada, and that one device is not enough. It also held that attending a business-to-business tradeshow in Nevada to solicit or negotiate business may in some circumstances count as purposefully doing business in the state, but only claims that arise from or relate to that activity can be brought here.

Essence USA is the New Jersey-based representative of an Israeli manufacturer, Essence SmartCare Ltd. It does not sell to consumers. Instead it supplies resellers such as Medical Guardian LLC, a Pennsylvania company that first contracted with Essence USA in 2014 in Philadelphia.

The complaint alleged that Pass and her children "selected and purchased" a Care@Home C7000 in-home medical alert system from Medical Guardian in 2020. In 2021, Pass fell at her Nevada home and the device failed to alert emergency services. Her daughter found her 36 hours later, lying where she had fallen, and Pass died a week later of her injuries.

The family sued Essence USA and Medical Guardian, but not SmartCare. Essence USA moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, meaning the court's power over a defendant from out of state. It submitted an affidavit from its president, Yaniv Amir, stating that the company had no offices, bank accounts or employees in Nevada and had never directed products for distribution there.

District Judge Bita Yeager granted the motion and gave the family leave to amend. The judge later denied the family's motion for reconsideration but allowed limited jurisdictional discovery, which is fact-gathering confined to whether the court has that power. Amir testified in a deposition that he had met with Medical Guardian at CES roughly five times, including in 2020, to discuss the companies' business relationship and product "road map." Essence USA also produced the 2014 supply agreement and a 2020 pricing agreement covering the Care@Home C7000 line.

The judge denied the family's renewed motion for reconsideration, finding that the family had not shown its claims arose from the company's CES contacts. The district court later certified the dismissal as final so the family could appeal while its claims against Medical Guardian proceed.

On appeal, Justice Pickering described a split among courts over the stream-of-commerce doctrine. Plurality opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court have favored a stricter "stream-of-commerce-plus" version, which requires that the company specifically target the state, but those opinions do not bind lower courts. "In the absence of a more authoritative pronouncement from the U.S. Supreme Court requiring adherence to the stream-of-commerce-plus test, we reaffirm that in Nevada the pure stream-of-commerce test governs," the court wrote.

Even that test has limits, the court held. Relying on Justice Breyer's concurrence in J. McIntyre Machinery v. Nicastro, a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court case, the court said "a single sale of a product in a State does not constitute an adequate basis for asserting jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant." The family conceded at oral argument that nothing in the record showed any Care@Home device other than Pass's reaching a Nevada consumer. The court called the facts "identical in all material respects" to those found insufficient in Nicastro.

The record also did not show how the device reached Nevada or who bought it. The district court had observed that "big chunks of information . . . are missing." The family cast Essence USA's tradeshow presence as the act through which the company, in the court's words, "turned on the faucet" so the device could reach Pass. Justice Pickering wrote that the argument did not cure the gap, because "this meeting only ever produced a single droplet of Care@Home products in Nevada, never the regular stream required."

On the tradeshow theory, the family relied on Firouzabadi v. First Judicial District Court, a 1994 Nevada decision upholding jurisdiction over a New Jersey apparel vendor that sold 28,000 shirts to a California retailer at a Las Vegas tradeshow. The court said that case was different because the claims there arose from the very contracts signed at the show. "The analogous scenario here would be if Medical Guardian sued Essence USA over a contract the two had signed at CES," Justice Pickering wrote.

The family argued that Medical Guardian could not have sold the device to Pass but for the 2020 CES meetings, which it said produced the pricing agreement. The court called that link "almost entirely speculative." Justice Pickering wrote that "it is just as reasonable to infer, for example, that the 2020 pricing agreement was negotiated before or after CES or that these sales had been authorized in a prior agreement."

The court also said the case fell short under the broader "relates to" standard of Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, where the U.S. Supreme Court upheld jurisdiction because Ford had "extensively promoted, sold, and serviced" its vehicles in the forum states. Essence USA has no consumer marketing or sales presence in Nevada, the court said, and its limited warranty did not approach the direct-to-consumer contact the court credited in a 2025 case against TikTok.

Finding the requirement met "based on such a tenuous relationship between Essence USA's appearance at a business-to-business tradeshow and Pass's eventual use of the Care@Home device would eliminate any meaningful constraint on this standard," Justice Pickering wrote. Because the claims failed that test, the court did not decide whether exercising jurisdiction would be reasonable, the third step of the analysis.

Lawyers for the family included Victoria R. Allen of Christian Morris Trial Attorneys. Essence USA was represented by James P.C. Silvestri of Pyatt Silvestri.