Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/542/241/opinion.html
Timestamp: 2017-05-24 02:22:24
Document Index: 425364801

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1782', '§1782', '§1696', '§1782', '§1782', '§1782', '§1782', '§1782']

Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Opinion by Justice Ginsburg) :: 542 U.S. 241 (2004) :: Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center Log In
Footnote 1 “[A] letter rogatory is the request by a domestic court to a foreign court to take evidence from a certain witness.” Jones, International Judicial Assistance: Procedural Chaos and a Program for Reform, 62 Yale L. J. 515, 519 (1953). See Smit, International Litigation under the United States Code, 65 Colum. L. Rev. 1015, 1027 (1965) (hereinafter Smit, International Litigation) (noting foreign courts’ use of letters rogatory to request evidence-gathering aid from United States courts).
Footnote 3 See Smit, International Litigation 1026–1027, n. 72 (commenting that Congress eliminated the word “pending” in order “to facilitate the gathering of evidence prior to the institution of litigation abroad”).
Footnote 4 The Alabama federal court granted summary judgment in Intel’s favor in the Intergraph litigation, and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed. See 253 F. 3d, at 699. A protective order, imposed by the Alabama federal court, governs the confidentiality of all discovery in that case. App. 72–73.
Footnote 6 AMD’s complaint to the Commission alleges, inter alia, “that Intel has monopolized the worldwide market for Windows-capable i.e. x86, microprocessors.” Id., at 55–56. The documents from the Intergraph litigation relate to: “(a) the market within which Intel x86 microprocessors compete; (b) the power that Intel enjoys within that market; (c) actions taken by Intel to preserve and enhance its position in the market; and (d) the impact of the actions taken by Intel to preserve and enhance its market position.” App. 55.
Footnote 7 The First and Eleventh Circuits have construed §1782(a) to contain a foreign-discoverability requirement. See In re Application of Asta Medica, S. A., 981 F. 2d 1, 7 (CA1 1992); In re Request for Assistance from Ministry of Legal Affairs of Trinidad and Tobago, 848 F. 2d 1151, 1156 (CA11 1988). The Fourth and Fifth Circuits have held that no such requirement exists if the §1782(a) applicant is a foreign sovereign. See In re Letter of Request from Amtsgericht Ingolstadt, F. R. G., 82 F. 3d 590, 592 (CA4 1996); In re Letter Rogatory from First Court of First Instance in Civil Matters, Caracas, Venezuela, 42 F. 3d 308, 310–311 (CA5 1995). In alignment with the Ninth Circuit, the Second and Third Circuits have rejected a foreign-discoverability requirement. See In re Application of Gianoli Aldunate, 3 F. 3d 54, 59–60 (CA2 1993); In re Bayer AG, 146 F. 3d 188, 193–194 (CA3 1998).
Footnote 8 The Court of First Instance, which is “attached to the [European] Court of Justice,” was established “to improve the judicial protection of individual interests, particularly in cases requiring the examination of complex facts, whilst at the same time reducing the workload of the [European] Court of Justice.” C. Kerse, E. C. Antitrust Procedure 37 (3d ed. 1994).
Footnote 9 The dissent suggests that the Commission “more closely resembles a prosecuting authority, say, the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, than an administrative agency that adjudicates cases, say, the Federal Trade Commission.” Post, at 4. That is a questionable suggestion in view of the European Commission’s authority to determine liability and impose penalties, dispositions that will remain final unless overturned by the European courts. See supra, at 10.
Footnote 10 The term “interested person,” Intel notes, also appears in 28 U. S. C. §1696(a), a provision enacted concurrently with the 1964 revision of §1782. Brief for Petitioner 27. Section 1696(a) authorizes federal district courts to “order service … of any document issued in connection with a [foreign] proceeding” pursuant to a request made by the foreign tribunal “or upon application of any interested person.” Intel reasons that “[t]he class of private parties qualifying as ‘interested persons’ for [service] purposes must of course be limited to litigants, because private parties … cannot serve ‘process’ unless they have filed suit.” Ibid. (emphasis in original). Section 1696(a), however, is not limited to service of process; it allows service of “any document” issued in connection with a foreign proceeding. As the Government points out by way of example: “[I]f the European Commission’s procedures were revised to require a complainant to serve its complaint on a target company, but the complainant’s role in the Commission’s proceedings otherwise remained unchanged, [§]1696 would authorize the district court to provide that ‘interested [person]’ with assistance in serving that document.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20, n. 11.
Footnote 11 Section §1782(a) instructs that a district court’s discovery 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 … [or may be] the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” This mode-of-proof-taking instruction imposes no substantive limitation on the discovery to be had.
Footnote 12 Most civil-law systems lack procedures analogous to the pretrial discovery regime operative under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. See ALI, ALI/Unidroit Principles and Rules of Transnational Civil Procedure, Proposed Final Draft, Rule 22, Comment R–22E (2004) (“Disclosure and exchange of evidence under the civil-law systems are generally more restricted, or nonexistent.”); Hazard, Discovery and the Role of the Judge in Civil Law Jurisdictions, 73 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1017, 1018–
1019 (1998) (same). See also Smit, Recent Developments 235, n. 93 (“The drafters [of §1782] were quite aware of the circumstance that civil law systems generally do not have American type pretrial discovery, and do not compel the production of documentary evidence.”).
Footnote 13 See Smit, American Assistance to Litigation in Foreign and International Tribunals: Section 1782 of Title 28 of the U. S. C. Revisited, 25 Syracuse J. Int’l L. & Comm. 1, 13, and n. 63 (1998) (hereinafter Smit, American Assistance) (noting that “[a] similar decision was rendered by the President of the Amsterdam District Court”).
Footnote 14 A civil-law court, furthermore, might attend to litigant-parity concerns in its merits determination: “In civil law countries, documentary evidence is generally submitted as an attachment to the pleadings or as part of a report by an expert… . A civil law court generally rules upon the question of whether particular documentary evidence may be relied upon only in its decision on the merits.” Smit, Recent Developments 235–236, n. 94.
Footnote 15 Among its proposed rules, the dissent would exclude from §1782(a)’s reach discovery not available “under foreign law” and “under domestic law in analogous circumstances.” Post, at 3. Because comparison of systems is slippery business, the dissent’s rule is infinitely easier to state than to apply. As the dissent’s examples tellingly reveal, see post, at 1–2, a foreign proceeding may have no direct analogue in our legal system. In light of the variety of foreign proceedings resistant to ready classification in domestic terms, Congress left unbounded by categorical rules the determination whether a matter is proceeding “in a foreign or international tribunal.” While we reject the rules the dissent would inject into the statute, see post, at 3–6, we do suggest guides for the exercise of district-court discretion, see infra, at 20–23.
Footnote 16 At oral argument, counsel for AMD observed: “In the United States, we could have brought a private action in the district court for these very same violations. In Europe, our only Europe-wide remedy was to go to the [European Commission].” Tr. of Oral Arg. 33. Footnote 17 The dissent sees a need for “categorical limits” to ward off “expensive, time-consuming battles about discovery.” Post, at 2. That concern seems more imaginary than real. There is no evidence whatsoever, in the 40 years since §1782(a)’s adoption, see supra, at 3–4, of the costs, delays, and forced settlements the dissent hypothesizes. See Smit, American Assistance 1, 19–20 (“The revised section 1782 … has been applied in scores of cases… . All in all, Section 1782 has largely served the purposes for which it was enacted… . [T]here appears to be no reason for seriously considering, at this time, any statutory amendments.”).
Footnote 18 The European Commission’s “Leniency Program” allows “cartel participants [to] confess their own wrongdoing” in return for prosecutorial leniency. European Commission Amicus Curiae 14–15; Brief for European Commission as Amicus Curiae in Support of Pet. for Cert. 6.
Footnote 19 The District Court might also consider the significance of the protective order entered by the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. See App. 73; supra, at 6, n. 4; cf. Four Pillars Enterprises Co. v. Avery Dennison Corp., 308 F. 3d 1075, 1080 (CA9 2002) (affirming district-court denial of discovery that “would frustrate the protective order of [another] federal [district] court”).