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Frontier Leasing Corporation v. Hunt, 2010-2813781 (N.C.App. July 20, 2010) (unpublished disposition ' see North Carolina rules before citing)

This North Carolina appellate decision affirms a trial court's order granting a motion by the original lessor's assignee to enforce a default judgment entered by an Iowa state court against the lessee, a golf professional in North Carolina. The lessee had signed a lease containing a consent to personal jurisdiction and venue in Iowa courts. (The facts underlying the litigation are common to many other cases involving the leasing of golf beverage carts with respect to which the lessees were told that payments to them for advertising on the carts would equal the payments owing under the leases. After the advertising payments stopped, many of the lessees stopped making payments under their leases.) This court finds that Iowa law would hold the forum selection clause enforceable notwithstanding the lessee's claims that the clause was not prominently displayed on the lease form and that he was not a sophisticated businessman. The court distinguishes the facts in this case from those in a Pennsylvania case in which that court declined to enforce the forum selection clause against a lessee who was an immigrant with limited understanding of the English language.