Opinion ID: 3023556
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: r esponse to the d issent

Text: Our colleague has filed a thoughtful dissent with several plausible arguments. To stem any confusion, we respond to those arguments. 1. The dissent argues that our holding “subverts a 22 There was no waiver of personal jurisdiction in this case, but such a waiver could substitute for the Court’s determination on personal jurisdiction. See Ins. Corp. of Ir., Ltd. v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 703 (1982). 23 Given this conclusion, we express no opinion regarding MISC’s argument that the District Court abused its discretion in dismissing its complaint on the basis of forum non conveniens. 38 primary purpose of the doctrine of forum non conveniens,” defining (without citation) that primary purpose as “protect[ing] a defendant from being compelled to litigate in a forum where it will have to shoulder the burden of substantial and unnecessary effort and expense.” This overdramatizes the doctrine, as most litigation involves unwanted effort and expense for the defendant. The doctrine’s purpose has elsewhere been described as a district court—with jurisdiction and venue—declining to exercise that jurisdiction “when it appears that the convenience of the parties and the court and the interests of justice indicate that the action should be tried in another forum.” 17 James Wm. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice § 111.70, at 111-208 (3d ed. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Friedenthal et al., supra, § 2.17, at 91 (noting that “a correct, but inconvenient, tribunal” may refuse to exercise its jurisdiction when “the forum may have little to no connection with the significant events forming the basis of the lawsuit” or when “the litigation could be brought more appropriately in another forum”). Our holding coincides with this purpose; it ensures that both forums are proper and allows for choice between them. 2. The dissent quotes Ruhrgas for the proposition that the rejection of hypothetical jurisdiction is not pertinent here: “[A] court that dismisses on . . . non-merits grounds . . . before finding subject-matter jurisdiction, [however] makes no assumption of 39 law-declaring power that violates the separation of powers principles underlying . . . Steel Company.” (Diss. Op. at 2 (alterations and omissions in original).) This quotation suggests that a district court’s dismissal on nonmerits grounds of any type does not violate the prohibition against hypothetical jurisdiction. But while the first omission in the quotation was as it appeared in Ruhrgas, the second one obscures the fact that the Supreme Court restricted its statement to “non-merits grounds such as . . . personal jurisdiction,” Ruhrgas, 526 U.S. at 584 (omission in original). We held in section II.B.1 above that forum non conveniens was a non-merits issue, but of a different type from personal jurisdiction—a holding the dissent does not dispute. Thus, we do not agree that Ruhrgas makes the principle of hypothetical jurisdiction inapplicable in this context. 3. We are faulted for recognizing that our holding may not always result in the most streamlined procedure. (Diss. Op. at 2.) But the dissent does not comment on our concerns in footnote 21, above, that the opposite holding could also result in a waste of resources. We are not willing to sacrifice the correct result for an occasional gain in judicial economy. 4. The dissent ignores our citations to the Supreme Court, the Seventh Circuit, and two treatises by claiming that 40 our “only rationale” is based on Black’s Law Dictionary. (Diss. Op. at 3.) We cite Black’s, but our reasoning is also based on—among other sources—Gulf Oil’s statement that forum non conveniens in all cases “presupposes at least two forums in which the defendant is amenable to process,” 330 U.S. at 507, and the Seventh Circuit’s statement that forum non conveniens “by definition” contemplates that the forum deciding the motion “has both subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction over all parties,” In re Bridgestone/Firestone, 420 F.3d at 704. 5. Our colleague acknowledges that the Seventh Circuit’s Kamel case supports our result (Diss. Op. at 2–3), but cannot distinguish it away. The dissent’s only quibble with the case is apparently Kamel’s lack of citation or explanation (Diss. Op. at 3 n.1), but that does not prevent us from joining the Seventh Circuit on this issue. The dissent also ignores the Seventh Circuit’s reiteration of Kamel’s principles in its 2005 In re Bridgestone/Firestone case quoted above. 6. The dissent restricts Gulf Oil to holding “only that where the ‘principle of forum non conveniens [applies] a court may resist imposition upon its jurisdiction even when jurisdiction is authorized by the letter of a general venue statute.’” (Diss. Op. at 3 n.2 (quoting Gulf Oil, 330 U.S. at 507) (alteration in original).) This ignores the immediately preceding sentence in the Gulf Oil opinion, the one quoted above that forum non conveniens “presupposes at least two forums in which the defendant is amenable to process,” Gulf Oil, 330 U.S. 41 at 507; see also id. at 504 (noting that “the doctrine of forum non conveniens can never apply if there is absence of jurisdiction or mistake of venue”). 7. Our citation to the Ninth Circuit’s Patrickson case is criticized as “inapposite.” (Diss. Op. at 3 n.2.) We agree that the Supreme Court did not explicitly discuss its affirmance of the Ninth Circuit’s reversal of the forum non conveniens dismissal for a lack of subject matter jurisdiction. But as Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell said, in his oftmisquoted phrase, “You’d be better informed if instead of listening to what we say, you watch what we do.” The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations 254 (Fred R. Shapiro ed., 1993). What the Court did speaks louder than its lack of discussion about it. 8. The dissent concedes that the Supreme Court stated that forum non conveniens “‘can never apply’” without jurisdiction, but then claims that courts may abstain from exercising their jurisdiction without first checking to see if they have it. (Diss. Op. at 4 (quoting Gulf Oil, 330 U.S. at 504).) In other words, our colleague believes that a court can rule on forum non conveniens—which requires jurisdiction—just so long as it pretends that it has jurisdiction. But if a court suspects that it does not have personal jurisdiction over the parties, can it still dismiss for forum non conveniens? What if that court knows for certain that it does not have personal jurisdiction? We cannot tell how far the dissent’s principle of willing 42 blindness goes, but we decline to allow courts to exercise this legal fiction when ruling on a doctrine that depends by definition on the courts’ having jurisdiction. 9. Last, the dissent claims that, while “it is important to determine whether the allegedly more convenient forum has jurisdiction to entertain the suit, there is no utility in, and no doctrinal necessity for, insisting that the present forum determine its own jurisdiction before dismissing.” (Diss. Op. at 4.) But this is certainly incorrect. The D.C. Circuit admitted as much in Papandreou. Cf. 139 F.3d at 256 n.6. It recognized that district courts without jurisdiction may not grant conditional dismissals on forum non conveniens grounds. Therefore, while district courts can “determine” whether the alternative forum has jurisdiction, they cannot make their decision stick under the dissent’s reasoning. The usefulness of and necessity for our holding are that it grants district courts plenary power to deal with the consequences of their forum non conveniens dismissals. Not only can courts dismiss cases once their jurisdiction is established, but they can also enforce those dismissals and protect the non-moving parties in those cases. In sum, we appreciate the dissent’s arguments, but we remain unpersuaded and unchanged in our conviction that forum non conveniens, by its very terms, requires courts beforehand to ascertain and have subject matter jurisdiction and personal 43 jurisdiction.24