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Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale v. United States District Court

Supreme Court of the United States · 1987 · Civil Procedure

Civil ProcedureDiscoveryHague Evidence ConventionInternational comityFederal Rules of Civil ProcedureHague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroadinternational discoveryforeign litigant

Facts

The petitioners were French corporations owned by the Republic of France and were sued in the Southern District of Iowa after a Rallye aircraft crashed in Iowa. After initial discovery proceeded under the Federal Rules without objection, plaintiffs served further interrogatories, document requests, and requests for admission. Petitioners moved for a protective order, arguing that because the evidence was in France, the Hague Evidence Convention supplied the exclusive procedures and that French penal law barred compliance with non-Convention discovery. The lower courts rejected the requested broad protection.

Issue

When a federal court has personal jurisdiction over a foreign party, must the court require litigants to use Hague Evidence Convention procedures to obtain interrogatory answers, documents, and admissions located in a foreign signatory nation, either exclusively or as a mandatory first resort?

Rule

The Hague Evidence Convention does not provide exclusive or mandatory procedures for obtaining evidence located abroad from a foreign litigant subject to the jurisdiction of an American court. Convention procedures are available as an optional method, and a district court should decide whether to employ them through a particularized comity analysis that considers the facts of the case, the sovereign interests involved, and the likely effectiveness of Convention procedures, while closely supervising discovery to guard against unnecessary or unduly burdensome demands on foreign litigants.

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Nora Bennett sues Alpine Torque Systems, a Swiss manufacturer, in federal court in Denver for injuries allegedly caused by industrial equipment sold in Colorado. Alpine Torque is subject to personal jurisdiction and has responsive testing records stored in Zurich; it moves for a protective order arguing that all discovery must proceed exclusively through Hague Convention letters of request.

How should the district court rule?

Explanation. The majority held that the Hague Evidence Convention is permissive, not exclusive. A federal court with personal jurisdiction over a foreign litigant retains authority to order discovery under the Federal Rules even when the evidence is physically located in a signatory nation. The court should not adopt a categorical Hague-only approach.