Opinion ID: 174351
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Denial of Discovery According to the Hague Convention

Text: Next, Lechoslaw argues that the Superior Court and the District Court both erred in preventing him from taking depositions of Bank Handlowy's agents in accordance with the Hague Convention. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide that depositions may be taken in a foreign country pursuant to any applicable treaty or convention. Fed.R.Civ.P. 28(b). Both trial courts denied Lechoslaw's various motions seeking to extend the discovery deadline and to take depositions abroad. Given the lateness of the request to take depositions and the potential for delay, this call was well within the court's discretion as to trial management. Ayala-Gerena v. Bristol Myers-Squibb Co., 95 F.3d 86, 91 (1st Cir.1996). Bank Handlowy was dismissed from the case for lack of personal jurisdiction on December 2, 2004. After three extensions to the tracking order, the discovery deadline for this case was extended to February 28, 2005. On March 6, 2006, over one year after the deadline for the end of discovery had passed, after cross motions for summary judgment had been filed by both remaining parties, and after the Superior Court had ruled on some of those motions, Lechoslaw filed his first motion to reopen discovery, extend the discovery deadline, amend the tracking order, and to depose Bank Handlowy under the Hague Convention. Lechoslaw filed essentially this same motion multiple times with the Superior Court and once with the District Court. While the information that Lechoslaw sought in these motions might have been crucial to his case, [11] the Superior Court and later the District Court did not abuse their discretion in failing to reopen discovery over one year after it had closed and after summary judgment motions had been filed in the case. The procedures of the Hague Convention do not come without a significant time cost. In many situations the Letter of Request procedure authorized by the Convention would be unduly time consuming and expensive, as well as less certain to produce needed evidence than direct use of the Federal Rules. Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale v. U.S. Dist. Court for the S. Dist. of Iowa, 482 U.S. 522, 542, 107 S.Ct. 2542, 96 L.Ed.2d 461 (1987); see also Int'l Soc'y for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 105 F.R.D. 435, 450 (S.D.N.Y. 1984) ([A] number of courts have observed that the Hague Convention is quite slow and costly even when the foreign government agrees to cooperate); In Re Bedford Computer Corp., 114 B.R. 2, 6 (Bankr.D.N.H.1990) (opining that the only effect of using the Hague Convention rules would be to further delay [this] adversary proceeding). Lechoslaw waited until almost two years after Bank Handlowy was dismissed from the case to request information from it. Not only that, but at the time Lechoslaw made his first request, discovery had been completed for over a year and cross summary judgment motions had been filed and adjudicated. Lechoslaw should have known that he needed this information from Bank Handlowy much earlier than 2006. Under these circumstances, it was not an abuse of discretion for the courts not to reopen discovery.