Background
Officer Kurt Stokinger was shot in Boston in 2016 with a firearm whose purchase, the complaint alleges, had been facilitated in 2015 by a New Hampshire transaction on Armslist.com — an online marketplace for firearms and firearm-related products operated by a Pennsylvania-based company. Officer Stokinger and his wife brought a New Hampshire–law suit against Armslist in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, alleging negligence, aiding and abetting tortious and illegal conduct, public nuisance, loss of spousal consortium, and loss of support. The theory of liability was that Armslist’s website design “actively encourage[d], assist[ed], and profit[ed] from the illegal sale and purchase of firearms.”
Armslist moved to dismiss on three grounds: lack of personal jurisdiction; the New Hampshire statute of limitations, res judicata, and collateral estoppel; and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The district court dismissed solely on personal-jurisdiction grounds, holding that Armslist had not “purposefully availed” itself of the protections of New Hampshire law, and denied the Stokingers’ alternative request for jurisdictional discovery. Armslist’s Section 230 motion was denied as moot. The Stokingers appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The First Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded. The opinion limits its personal-jurisdiction analysis to purposeful availment — the district court did not reach relatedness, and the briefing on relatedness was cursory — and leaves the alternative grounds for dismissal (including Section 230) for the district court to address on remand.
Pre-2017 contacts are insufficient on their own
The court agreed with the district court that Armslist’s New Hampshire contacts as of 2015 (the alleged sale) and 2016 (the shooting) were not, by themselves, enough to make a prima facie case of purposeful availment. Two strands of evidence about that earlier period — that Armslist designed the site to facilitate “local” transactions by tagging listings with the seller’s geographic location, and that Armslist generated advertising revenue from visitors including those from New Hampshire — supported the Stokingers’ theory in part but did not, on this record alone, show that Armslist had deliberately targeted New Hampshire’s economy or society.
Post-2018 listings, combined with design and revenue, suffice
The court parted company with the district court on the significance of evidence that, from 2018 forward, Armslist hosted an average of 16,000 New Hampshire firearm listings per year. The district court had assumed those contacts were relevant and still found them insufficient. The First Circuit disagreed: when those listings are considered alongside the website’s design (which the panel concluded was plausibly built to direct activity toward the seller’s state) and the advertising-revenue stream tied to those listings, the totality is enough for a prima facie showing of purposeful availment. The court relied on familiar “voluntariness and foreseeability” principles — a defendant whose conduct is “such that [the defendant] should reasonably anticipate being haled into court” in a forum has purposefully availed itself of that forum.
Open issues on remand
The court expressly declined to decide relatedness — whether the Stokingers’ claims, which rest on a 2015 sale and a 2016 shooting, actually “directly arise out of or relate to” listings that appeared from 2018 onward. As the court put it, “[i]t is hardly evident” that this relatedness requirement is satisfied on the present record. That issue, and Armslist’s previously unaddressed Section 230 and statute-of-limitations defenses, remain for the district court on remand.
Jurisdictional discovery
Finally, the First Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of jurisdictional discovery. The Stokingers’ request was procedurally deficient and substantively duplicative of evidence already in the record. The denial was within the district court’s discretion.
Key Takeaways
- Specific personal jurisdiction over an online marketplace can be supported by an aggregation of (i) site design that directs activity to the seller’s state, (ii) advertising revenue tied to in-state activity, and (iii) substantial, sustained volumes of in-state listings. None of the three alone is dispositive in the First Circuit; the totality is what matters.
- Post-claim contacts (here, listings that appeared after both the 2015 sale and the 2016 shooting) can be considered alongside contemporaneous contacts when the totality of contacts is the question. The First Circuit’s general rule that “contacts coming into existence after the cause of action arose will not be relevant” (Harlow v. Children’s Hospital) was not applied here because the district court had assumed relevance and the panel limited its review accordingly.
- The opinion sharpens, but does not resolve, a recurring tension in online-platform jurisdictional doctrine: a site that “makes information available to those who are interested in it” is passive, but a fully interactive commercial site that processes in-forum transactions is not. Armslist’s classified-ad model sits between those poles, and the panel’s framing — design choices plus revenue plus listing volume — gives plaintiffs in similar future cases a roadmap.
- Section 230 was raised at the trial-court stage but not decided. Online marketplaces facing personal-jurisdiction-plus-Section-230 dismissal motions should expect courts to reach jurisdiction first and to reserve the Section 230 question if the case survives.
Why It Matters
This is a meaningful jurisdictional ruling for online platforms that host classified-style transactions tied to specific geographies — firearms marketplaces, rental-property listings, niche-goods aggregators, vacation rentals, and pet-care sites among them. Operators that build their products to highlight the seller’s state and earn advertising revenue from in-state engagement now have clearer warning that years of in-state listings, taken together with the platform’s design, can support specific jurisdiction in any state where harm is alleged. The fact that the platform never physically operated in the forum, and that the operative transaction took place years before the data the court ultimately relied on, did not save Armslist on this record.
For litigators, the opinion is also a reminder that the relatedness prong of the specific-jurisdiction test does real work and is more vulnerable than purposeful availment in a case like this one — where the harm and the alleged in-forum conduct are separated by several years. Expect the district court to wrestle with relatedness, and then with Section 230, when the case returns.
Source
The First Circuit’s published opinion is available here: Stokinger v. Armslist, LLC — Opinion (February 5, 2026).