Opinion ID: 2381510
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Obsolete Private Interest Factors

Text: In their discussion of the private interest factors supposedly designed to promote convenience and fairness, the dissenters choose to avoid entire bodies of law concerning jurisdiction and venue. The dissenters ignore 154 years of Texas venue law designed to give defendants the privilege of being sued in their home country. See Langley, A Suggested Revision of the Texas Venue Statute, 30 Tex.L.Rev. 547, 547 (1952). Texas has generated more case law concerning venue than the other forty-nine states combined and has recently enacted a new venue statute. See Note, Venue Procedure in Texas: An Analysis of the 1983 Amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure Governing Venue Practice Under the New Venue Statute, 36 Baylor L.Rev. 241, 242 n. 13, 253 (1984). It is ironic that defendants for years have sought to preserve a right to be sued in a home country, yet Shell nevertheless argues that when it is sued in its hometown, the legal fiction of forum non conveniens is needed to ensure convenience and fairness. In his dissent, Justice Gonzalez correctly crystalizes the private interest factors as those considerations that make the trial of a case relatively easy, expeditious, and inexpensive for the parties. 786 S.W.2d 695. Advances in transportation and communications technology have rendered the private factors largely irrelevant: A forum is not necessarily inconvenient because of its distance from pertinent parties or places if it is readily accessible in a few hours of air travel. It will often be quicker and less expensive to transfer a witness or a document than to transfer a lawsuit. Jet travel and satellite communications have significantly altered the meaning of non conveniens. Calavo Growers of California v. Belgium, 632 F.2d 963, 969 (2d Cir.1980) (Newman J., concurring). See also McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U.S. 220, 223, 78 S.Ct. 199, 201, 2 L.Ed.2d 223 (1957) ([M]odern transportation and communication have made it much less burdensome for a party sued to defend himself in a State where he engages in economic activity.). One judge asked whether the entire doctrine of forum non conveniens should not be re-examined in the light of the transportation revolution that has occurred since [ Gulf Oil]. Fitzgerald v. Texaco, Inc., 521 F.2d 448, 456 (2d Cir.1975) (Oakes, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1052, 96 S.Ct. 781, 46 L.Ed.2d 641 (1976). Even Justice Hecht, in his dissent, recognizes that these factors have been rendered largely obsolete: Ease of travel and communication, availability of evidence by videotape and facsimile transmission, and other technological advances have reduced the significance of some private inconvenience factors. 786 S.W.2d 708. [7] In sum, the private factors are no longer a predominant considerationfairness and convenience to the parties have been thrust out of the forum non conveniens equation. As the doctrine is now applied, the term forum non conveniens has clearly become a misnomer.