A federal court in Kentucky denied Jiandong (Peter) Xu’s motion to dismiss Papa John’s suit for lack of personal jurisdiction but stayed the action for an arbitrator to decide whether Papa John’s claims were subject to arbitration. Papa John’s International, Inc. v. Jiandong (Peter) Xu, 2026 WL 2388574 (W.D. Ky. Aug. 17, 2026). Papa John’s entered into an international development agreement with Tinale Good Global Co., Ltd., which Xu partly owned and whose obligations he personally guaranteed, to develop Papa John’s franchised restaurants in Cambodia. After audits identified alleged violations of food-safety and operational standards, Papa John’s terminated the agreement and sued Xu for specific performance, alleging that he continued operating the Cambodian restaurants as authorized Papa John’s locations in violation of the agreement’s post-termination obligations. Xu moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction or, alternatively, to enforce the agreement’s arbitration provision and stay the case.
The court found specific personal jurisdiction because Xu had deliberately initiated a long-term relationship with a Kentucky-based company by submitting an application to its Louisville headquarters, negotiating with Kentucky personnel, and assuming continuing obligations that were supported or administered from Kentucky. The court further found that Papa John’s contract claim arose from those Kentucky-directed contacts and that requiring Xu to litigate in Kentucky was reasonable, even though he lived in New York and performed the agreement in Cambodia. Turning to arbitration, the court held that the development agreement’s incorporation of the International Chamber of Commerce arbitration rules clearly and unmistakably delegated threshold questions of arbitrability to the arbitrator. The agreement’s carveout for trademark and intellectual property claims did not alter who decided arbitrability because the carveout concerned the scope of the arbitration agreement, not the arbitrator’s authority to determine that scope. Accordingly, the court declined to decide whether Papa John’s claims fell within the carveout and stayed the case pending the arbitrator’s decision.