Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca11-14-15701/USCOURTS-ca11-14-15701-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Consultinvest, Inc.
Appellee
Helga M. Glock
Appellant
Glock Professional, Inc.
Appellee
Glock, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 14-15701

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 1:13-cv-02598-CAP-LTW

HELGA M. GLOCK, 

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

GLOCK, INC., 

GLOCK PROFESSIONAL, INC., 

CONSULTINVEST, INC.,

Defendants-Appellees.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

________________________

(August 17, 2015)

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Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge, and SMITH,*

District Judge.

ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge:

Gaston Glock created the Glock 17 handgun for the Austrian army in 1982.

1

 

Four years later, Glock’s guns arrived in the United States.

2

 

Gaston’s3 divorce followed a similar course. In 2011, Gaston and his exwife Helga began their divorce proceedings in Austria. But those proceedings 

came to the United States even faster than Glock’s handguns. This case involves

what happened once they arrived.

I.

The American litigation started small, when, on March 18, 2013, Helga filed 

a miscellaneous proceeding under 28 U.S.C. § 1782, seeking to discover evidence 

 

* Honorable C. Lynwood Smith, Jr., United States District Judge for the Northern District 

of Alabama, sitting by designation.

1 Paul M. Barrett, Glock, the Rise of America’s Gun 9-13 (2013). The gun was unique 

among firearms at that time. Built in large part from plastic, the gun was lighter and easier to 

fire than other handguns on the market. Id. It also contained fewer parts and could hold 

seventeen bullets in its magazine, in comparison to significantly fewer bullets that some other 

handguns could carry. Id. The Glock gun also differed from other guns on the market in that it 

lacked a traditional safety. Id. at 31. 

2 Id. at 50. Within four years of their arrival in the United States, Glock firearms worked 

their way into American pop culture in Die Hard 2, when Bruce Willis’s character John 

McClane made the remark, “That punk pulled a Glock 7 [sic] on me. You know what that is? 

It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. Doesn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines, here, 

and it cost more than you make in a month.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099423/quotes (last 

visited Aug. 15, 2015). Ironically, the statement was factually inaccurate in just about every 

way.

3 Because Gaston Glock, Helga Glock, and several Glock corporate entities are involved 

in this case, this opinion refers to Gaston and Helga Glock by their first names to avoid 

confusion.

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from Glock, Inc., Glock Professional, Inc., and Consultinvest, Inc. (collectively, 

“Glock Entities”), in the United States for use in Gaston and Helga’s Austrian 

divorce proceedings. Ultimately, the Glock Entities did not challenge Helga’s 

right to obtain the items she sought4 and instead entered into a protective order that 

limited Helga’s use of any materials that the Glock Entities marked “confidential”

to proceedings “to which [Helga] is a party” (the “Protective Order”). 

But that was not the end of the United States litigation. About a year and a 

half after Helga filed her § 1782 application, she filed a separate RICO5 lawsuit, in 

the United States, against Gaston and the Glock Entities (“the RICO Action”). 

Helga then returned to the § 1782 court on October 13, 2014, to seek authorization 

to allow her to disclose the documents she obtained in that litigation to her RICO 

attorney, for potential use in the RICO Action. 

On October 30, 2014, the magistrate judge granted the motion in a paperless 

order. Apparently later that same day, the Glock Entities filed their response 

 4 When Helga initially served the authorized subpoenas on the Glock Entities, they 

objected. In response, Helga filed a motion to compel. Originally, the Glock Entities opposed 

the motion because, among other reasons, they believed that Helga could not use in the Austrian 

proceedings the discovery she sought since the Austrian proceedings had reached Austria’s 

highest court, which would not accept or review new evidence. After the Glock Entities filed 

their response, though, the Austrian court reinstated Helga’s proceedings. As a result, the Glock 

Entities agreed to produce some documents and began negotiating a protective order with Glock. 

They also asked the court to refrain from ruling on the motion to compel, but, after a hearing, the 

district court granted the motion to compel. The court also required the parties to confer and 

present an agreed protective order to the court. The parties filed a joint protective order that the 

court adopted on November 18, 2013.

5 A RICO lawsuit is an action filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt 

Organizations Act.

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opposing Helga’s use of the documents in connection with the RICO Action. 

Among other arguments, the Glock Entities asserted that, as a matter of law,

documents obtained under § 1782 may not be used in domestic litigation, and even 

if they could, the Protective Order precluded the use of the § 1782 documents in 

Helga’s domestic litigation. They also suggested that modifying the Protective 

Order would “intrud[e] on the prerogative” of the district judge in the RICO Action 

to control discovery in that case. 

On November 8, 2014, the magistrate judge vacated her earlier paperless 

order but then entered a written order granting Helga permission to use the 

documents in the RICO Action. The order found that the Protective Order “did not 

limit [Helga’s] use of the documents produced in this case to the Austrian 

Proceedings” but instead permitted the court to authorize use in a proceeding 

without reference to the foreign or domestic nature of the proceeding. The order 

further “rejected” the Glock Entities’ argument that granting her use of the 

documents would intrude on the RICO Action judge’s prerogatives.

The Glock Entities filed objections to the magistrate judge’s order pursuant 

to Rule 72(a), Fed. R. Civ. P. Among other points, they contended that the order 

was contrary to law because § 1782 prohibits documents obtained for use in 

foreign proceedings to be used in litigation in the United States. 

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The district judge sustained the objections of the Glock Entities and 

concluded that the magistrate judge’s determination that Helga could use evidence 

obtained in a § 1782 proceeding for a separate civil lawsuit in the United States 

was “contrary to law.” In addition, the district court opined with respect to the 

Protective Order that although it did not expressly exclude use of the documents in 

civil lawsuits in the United States, it must be construed to prohibit such use since it 

was entered into in the context of a § 1782 action. Nevertheless, the district court 

stated, “This order does not preclude Helga Glock from seeking the documents in 

the [RICO] Action.” Helga now appeals the district court’s order.

II.

Because Congress has granted broad discretion to district courts to grant an 

application under § 1782, this Court normally reviews the grant or denial of 

assistance for an abuse of discretion. United Kingdom v. United States, 238 F.3d 

1312, 1319 (11th Cir. 2001). But to the extent the district court’s decision was 

based on an interpretation of the § 1782 statute, our review is de novo. See 

Consorcio Ecuatoriano de Telecomunicaciones S.A. v. JAS Forwarding (USA), 

Inc., 747 F.3d 1262, 1268 (11th Cir. 2014).

We review an order interpreting a protective order for an abuse of discretion. 

See FTC v. AbbVie Prods. LLC, 713 F.3d 54, 61 (11th Cir. 2013). “A district court 

abuses its discretion if it applies an incorrect legal standard, applies the law in an 

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unreasonable or incorrect manner, follows improper procedures in making a 

determination, . . . makes findings of fact that are clearly erroneous . . . 

misconstrues its proper role, ignores or misunderstands the relevant evidence, [or] 

bases its decision upon considerations having little factual support.” Id. (citations 

and internal quotation marks omitted).

III.

This case raises two major issues: first, whether § 1782 precludes the use, in 

civil litigation in the United States, of evidence previously obtained under the 

statute; and second, if not, whether the Protective Order entered by the § 1782 

court prohibits the use, in civil litigation in the United States, of the materials 

procured under the § 1782 application in this case.

A.

We begin by considering what, if any, limitations § 1782 imposes on the 

later use, in United States civil litigation, of documents obtained pursuant to §

1782. To address this question, we must start with the statutory language. Owens 

v. Samkle Auto. Inc., 425 F.3d 1318, 1321 (11th Cir. 2005). For if it answers our 

question, we end our analysis with the statutory language as well. Id.

In relevant part, § 1782 provides,

The district court of the district in which a person resides 

or is found may order him to give his testimony or 

statement or to produce a document or other thing for use 

in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal . . . . 

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The order may prescribe the practice and procedure, 

which may be in whole or part the practice and procedure 

of the foreign country or the international tribunal, for 

taking the testimony or statement or producing the 

document or other thing. To the extent that the order 

does not prescribe otherwise, the testimony or statement 

shall be taken, and the document or other thing produced, 

in accordance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

28 U.S.C. § 1782(a). The plain language of this statute creates a procedure by 

which a person may obtain discovery in the United States “for use in a proceeding 

in a foreign or international tribunal.” Though it is clear from the statutory 

language that the law does not also establish a method for procuring discovery for 

use in a domestic proceeding, we find nothing in the language of § 1782 that 

purports to limit later uses of evidence that have been properly obtained under § 

1782. Had Congress intended to restrict the use of evidence previously obtained 

under § 1782 to proceedings in foreign or international tribunals, it easily could 

have expressed that intention in any number of ways, even by simply adding the 

word “only” or “solely” to the phrase “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or 

international tribunal.” But it did not do that.

On the other hand, neither did Congress include a sentence in the statute 

providing that once discovery is lawfully received under § 1782, it may be used for 

other legal purposes, including United States litigation. Instead, the statute is 

entirely silent on the issue of whether material procured under § 1782 may be used 

after it is lawfully obtained and used for the purpose for which it was obtained.

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This is not surprising because, throughout the history of the law, Congress 

was not focused on addressing what, if anything, could be done with documents 

that were previously lawfully obtained under the statute. Rather, “Section 1782 is 

the product of congressional efforts, over the span of nearly 150 years, to provide 

federal-court assistance in gathering evidence for use in foreign tribunals.” Intel 

Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 542 U.S. 241, 247, 124 S. Ct. 2466, 2473 

(2004). The current embodiment of the law reflects the policy choice to “provide 

efficient means of assistance in our federal courts for litigants involved in 

international litigation and [to] prompt foreign courts to follow our generous 

example and provide similar assistance to our court systems.” In the Matter of the 

Application of Malev Hungarian Airlines, 964 F.2d 97, 99 (2d Cir. 1992) (citing S. 

Rep. No. 1580, 88th Cong., 2d Sess. (1964), reprinted in 1964 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3782, 

3792-94; In re Letter Rogatory from the Justice Court., Dist. of Montreal, Canada, 

523 F.2d 562, 564-66 (6th Cir. 1975)). Nothing in the statutory language or in the

Senate Report accompanying the law suggests that Congress ever specifically 

contemplated whether documents previously obtained under § 1782 could later be 

used in civil United States proceedings.

And, apparently, none of our sister circuits have addressed this issue, either. 

So we consider the analogy of how domestic litigation works. First, though, we 

pause to distinguish between the concepts of using evidence and admitting

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evidence in court proceedings: A party may use evidence—whether or not it is 

admissible in court under the Federal Rules of Evidence—to develop a theory of 

the case, to prepare a complaint, to lead it to admissible evidence, to help it to 

settle a case, and to accomplish other aspects of prosecuting or defending a case. 

That fact, however, does not mean that the court will admit the evidence or even 

that the evidence is potentially admissible. Indeed, our discovery rules expressly 

contemplate the use of inadmissible evidence in prosecuting or defending a case. 

See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1) (“Relevant information need not be admissible at the 

trial if the discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of 

admissible evidence.”).

As a general rule, in United States litigation, to help prosecute or defend 

their lawsuits, parties may use any evidence they lawfully possess.

6 If, for 

example, a plaintiff obtains documents in discovery from a defendant in one case, 

nothing precludes her from using that evidence in a wholly separate lawsuit against 

the same defendant or a different party, even though she would not have had those 

documents to use in the second case had she not lawfully received them as

discovery in the first case. The law does not require her to rediscover the 

documents in the second case. Nor must she apply to the court in either lawsuit 

 

6 Of course, evidence subject to a protective order of a court, a confidentiality agreement, 

or otherwise legally protected may not be used in litigation that the order or agreement does not 

authorize.

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before being able to, say, draft a complaint in the second case based on information 

contained in the documents discovered in the first case. This is so even though no 

rule or law expressly authorizes a party to use, in furtherance of litigation, evidence 

that it lawfully possesses, whether as a result of earlier litigation or other 

circumstances.

Similarly, if a party lawfully possesses evidence that he would not be able to 

procure through discovery because, for example, the opposing party no longer had

the records in its possession, nothing prevents him from using that evidence to 

further his lawsuit. And that makes sense. As the Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure suggest, goals of our system of civil litigation include “secur[ing] the 

just, speedy, and inexpensive determination” of the proceeding. See Fed. R. Civ. 

P. 1. Allowing parties to use, for purposes of litigation, documents they have 

lawfully obtained, regardless of whether they could have obtained them through 

discovery in the case in which they use them, furthers these goals. We see no 

reason why a different rule should apply to the use, in United States litigation, of 

documents that were previously lawfully obtained under § 1782. 

Nor are we persuaded by the Glock Entities’ argument based on the District 

of Columbia Circuit’s decision in In re Letter of Request from Crown Prosecution 

Service of the United Kingdom, 870 F.2d 686 (D.C. Cir. 1989). They characterize 

that decision as having held that the district court “did not abuse its discretion by 

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not entering a ‘protective order to guard against improper use of the evidence in 

auxiliary or unrelated proceedings here or abroad. The district court’s order does 

not permit the Commissioners to do anything but send the evidence to the British 

prosecutors . . . and any other use by them would require court permission.’” The 

Glock Entities’ Brief at 20 (quoting In re Letter of Request from Crown 

Prosecution Serv. of United Kingdom, 870 F.2d 686, 693 n.11 (D.C. Cir. 1989)) 

(alterations made by the Glock Entities). Critically, the omitted parts of the 

quotation are citations to the transcript of the district court’s order. In other words, 

in In re Letter the District of Columbia Circuit was construing the district court’s 

specific § 1782 order in that case, not opining generally on the availability, for 

later use in United States proceedings, of materials procured under § 1782.

The Glock Entities also fire off another argument for why evidence lawfully 

obtained under § 1782 should not be able later to be used in United States 

litigation. It does not hit the mark, either.

The Glock Entities contend that the third Intel7 factor dictates against the 

conclusion we reach today. In Intel, the Supreme Court explained that once a party 

satisfies § 1782’s statutory requirements to obtain discovery, the district court has 

the authority to grant a § 1782 application, but whether then to do so falls within 

the district court’s discretion. See id., 542 U.S. at 264, 124 S. Ct. at 2482-83. To 

 

7 Intel Corp., 542 U.S. 241, 124 S. Ct. 2466.

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guide the district court’s exercise of its discretion, the Supreme Court set forth four 

factors for consideration. See id. at 264-65, 124 S. Ct. at 2483. The third Intel

factor8 suggests evaluating whether the § 1782 application “conceals an attempt to 

circumvent foreign proof-gathering restrictions or other policies of a foreign 

country or the United States.” Id. at 264-65, 124 S. Ct. at 2483. According to the 

Glock Entities, construing § 1782 in a way that does not prohibit later use, in 

United States proceedings, of evidence obtained under the statute would allow 

parties to circumvent domestic discovery rules, so we should reject such a 

construction.

We acknowledge that a § 1782 applicant could attempt to abuse the statute 

to obtain documents outside the discovery procedures set forth in the Federal Rules 

of Civil Procedure. But it naturally follows from the existence of the third Intel

factor that this kind of subterfuge is a valid reason to reject a § 1782 application in 

the first place. Parties concerned in a particular case that a § 1782 applicant is 

 

8 The other three Intel factors include the following:

(1) Whether “the person from whom discovery is sought is a 

participant in the foreign proceeding,” because “the need for § 

1782(a) aid generally is not as apparent as it ordinarily is when 

evidence is sought from a nonparticipant”; (2) “the nature of the 

foreign tribunal, the character of the proceedings underway abroad, 

and the receptivity of the foreign government or the court or 

agency abroad to U.S. federal-court judicial assistance”; . . . and

(4) whether the request is otherwise “unduly intrusive or 

burdensome.”

In re Clerici, 481 F.3d at 1334 (quoting Intel Corp., 542 U.S. at 264-65, 124 S. Ct. at 2483).

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attempting to use foreign litigation as a ruse for obtaining discovery in the United 

States without complying with the usual procedures of the Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure can and should bring evidence of such chicanery to the § 1782 court’s 

attention.

And even when no evidence of deception exists, nothing prevents a party 

from seeking to negotiate a protective order precluding the evidence from being 

used in United States civil litigation, particularly if the party has reason to believe 

that it risks exposure to United States litigation based on the evidence produced. 

Should negotiations fail, a party, for good cause, may also ask the § 1782 court to 

enter a protective order prohibiting use, in United States proceedings, of 

documents obtained under the statute. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c)(1). The judge can 

then decide whether, under the particular circumstances of the case, she believes 

the entry of such an order to be appropriate. Just as courts have substantial 

experience controlling discovery abuse in domestic litigation, we have no doubt 

that district courts can similarly root out sham applications under § 1782.

When subsequent challenges arise, the § 1782 court, having entered the § 

1782 order and, if applicable, the governing protective order, is in the best position 

to quickly evaluate allegations of improper use of § 1782 and the meaning of any 

governing protective order. Nor does the § 1782 court’s resolution of these 

challenges somehow impermissibly infringe on the authority of the district court 

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involved in the succeeding substantive United States civil litigation. As previously 

explained, allowing “use” of evidence for litigation is not the same thing as 

“admitting” evidence in litigation. Our system does not require a party to 

“rediscover” evidence that it has properly obtained, so the substantive United 

States court’s authority is not implicated prior to the filing of the subsequent 

lawsuit. And once the substantive case has been filed, it is the substantive United 

States court that makes all decisions regarding the admissibility of evidence, 

though it may choose to do so, in part, if it wishes, based on the conclusions of the 

§ 1782 court regarding whether a litigant improperly used § 1782 for the purpose 

of obtaining United States discovery that otherwise would not have been 

authorized.

But a rule that would categorically hold that documents lawfully obtained 

under § 1782 can never be used in United States civil litigation lacks a basis in the 

statutory language and has significant potential to adversely affect the goals and 

efficiency of United States litigation. For one thing, it would create the specter of 

requiring a civil version of a Kastigar hearing9 every time that civil litigation in the 

United States occurred after evidence was produced under § 1782. In other words, 

 

9 A Kastigar hearing is a type of hearing held in criminal cases. It is named for Kastigar 

v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 92 S. Ct. 1653 (1972). In a Kastigar hearing, the United States 

must demonstrate that none of the evidence it used to obtain an indictment or that it plans to use 

at trial derived from evidence procured from a defendant pursuant to the terms of an immunity 

agreement, to ensure that the defendant’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination 

is not violated. See United States v. Schwartz, 541 F.3d 1331, 1357 (11th Cir. 2008).

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the party alleged to have used the evidence obtained under § 1782 would have to 

prove that none of its evidence could be traced back to the § 1782 evidence. 

Courts are busy enough without having to engage in such undertakings on a regular 

basis. 

Along the same lines, a blanket rule prohibiting the use of evidence obtained 

under § 1782 would create a perverse incentive for a party responding to a § 1782 

order to flood the applicant with evidence in an effort to insulate itself from United 

States litigation by precluding the requesting party’s ability to use any of the 

evidence obtained in any future United States litigation. 

The restrictions on subsequent use of evidence obtained under § 1782 urged 

here by the Glock Entities are simply not supported by statutory text, legislative 

history, conventional discovery practice, or policy considerations. In short, we 

find that § 1782 does not preclude, as a matter of law, the use of evidence procured 

pursuant to it in subsequent United States civil litigation.10

 

10 In a single footnote in their brief, the Glock Entities suggest that Helga, in fact, 

obtained evidence under § 1782 with the intention all along of using it in the United States RICO 

litigation. In particular, they assert, “The fact that [Helga] filed a 354 page complaint in the 

RICO Action, which was not drafted overnight, suggests that she long ago made the decision to 

file an action against the U.S. Glock Entities in the United States.” First, this passing reference 

is not sufficient to preserve the Glock Entities’ argument. See Hamilton v. Southland Christian 

Sch., Inc., 680 F.3d 1316, 1319 (11th Cir. 2012). Second, even if the issue were not waived, the 

mere fact that Helga’s RICO complaint was 354 pages, in and of itself, does not show that Helga 

obtained the evidence under § 1782 for the purpose of using it in a later RICO complaint. 

Indeed, a year and a half went by between Helga’s filing of her § 1782 application and the filing 

of the RICO complaint. While drafting a 354-page complaint certainly takes time (though 

some, including Blaise Pascal, might say that drafting a shorter complaint requires more time, 

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B.

Since § 1782 does not limit use of the documents to foreign proceedings, we 

must consider whether the Protective Order precluded Helga from using the § 1782 

evidence in United States civil litigation. In relevant part, the Protective Order 

provides,

Disclosure of “Confidential” information and 

embodiments thereof . . . shall be restricted solely to the 

following persons who agree to be bound by the terms of 

this Order, unless additional persons are stipulated by 

counsel or authorized by the Court . . . and solely for use 

in a proceeding to which Applicant is a party (a 

“Proceeding”), provided, however, that if Applicant 

desires to use such documents in connection with 

Proceedings other than the proceedings currently pending 

in Austria (i.e., the proceedings for spousal support 

[3C135/11d, before the District Court Villach]; division 

of assets [40FAM 231/12s, before the District Court 

Villach]; changes to trust documents [22Cg 213/11 g, 

before the Klagenfurt Regional Court], and the 

revocation of share transfer [20Cg 180/11 I, before the 

Klagenfurt Regional Court], collectively referred to 

herein as the “Austrian Proceedings”), she shall first 

request and obtain leave of the Court to do so . . . .

(emphasis added).

As the district judge acknowledged, the language of the Protective Order 

does not expressly preclude Helga from using the § 1782 evidence in United States 

civil litigation. By defining “Proceeding” as any “proceeding to which [Helga] is a 

 

see Provincial Letters: Letter XVI (Dec. 4, 1656)), it does not necessarily require eighteen

months.

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party,” the Protective Order, on its face, authorizes Helga “to use” the § 1782 

evidence in any litigation anywhere in the world, in which she is involved, 

provided that she first obtains leave of court to do so. Here, she procured the 

permission of the presiding magistrate judge.

But the district judge reasoned, and the Glock Entities urge on appeal, that §

1782 precludes the use of evidence obtained under it in United States civil 

litigation, and since the Protective Order was entered into in the context of a §

1782 proceeding, the terms of the Protective Order must necessarily be 

coextensively limited with the bounds of § 1782. This argument rises or falls with

the notion that documents obtained under § 1782 may never be used in domestic 

civil litigation. But as we have explained, that is not a construction of § 1782 that 

we find to be supported by the law. So it cannot serve to narrow the plain terms of 

the Protective Order. 

IV.

Because the district court’s rulings were erroneous as a matter of law, we 

must reverse the district court’s order sustaining the Glock Entities’ objections to 

the magistrate judge’s order granting Helga’s motion for leave to use § 1782 

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evidence in the RICO Action. Ultimately, the § 1782 evidence authorized for use 

in the RICO Action, like the Glock gun,11 is here to stay.

REVERSED.

 

11 According to the Glock website, “approximately 65% of police departments” in the 

United States use Glock firearms. https://us.glock.com/products/sector/law-enforcement (last 

visited Aug. 15, 2015).

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