Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-401_2cp3.pdf
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ZF AUTOMOTIVE US, INC. v. LUXSHARE, LTD. 

Opinion of the Court 

I 
Both cases before us involve a party seeking discovery in
the United States for use in arbitration proceedings abroad.
In both, the party seeking discovery invoked §1782, which 
permits  a  district  court  to  order  the  production  of  certain 
evidence  “for  use  in  a  proceeding  in  a  foreign  or  interna-
tional tribunal.”  And in both, the party resisting discovery 
argued that the arbitral panel at issue did not qualify as a
“foreign or international tribunal” under the statute.

But  while  these  cases  present  the  same  threshold  legal 
question, their factual contexts differ.  We discuss each in 
turn. 

A 
The first case involves an allegation of fraud in a business
deal gone sour.  ZF Automotive US, Inc., a Michigan-based
automotive parts manufacturer and subsidiary of a German 
corporation,  sold  two  business  units  to  Luxshare,  Ltd.,  a 
Hong  Kong-based  company,  for  almost  a  billion  dollars. 
Luxshare claims that after the deal was done, it discovered 
that  ZF  had  concealed  information  about  the  business 
units.  As a result, Luxshare says, it overpaid by hundreds 
of millions of dollars. 

In the contract governing the sale, the parties had agreed
that  all  disputes  would  be  “exclusively  and  finally  settled 
by three (3) arbitrators in accordance with the Arbitration
Rules of the German Institution of Arbitration e.V. (DIS).” 
App. in No. 21–401, p. 93.  DIS is a private dispute-resolu-
tion organization based in Berlin.  The agreement, which is
governed  by  German  law,  provides  that  arbitration  take 
place in Munich and that the arbitration panel be formed 
by Luxshare and ZF each choosing one arbitrator and those 
two arbitrators choosing a third.

With an eye toward initiating a DIS arbitration against 
ZF, Luxshare filed an ex parte application under §1782 in