Opinion ID: 218877
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Allegations of collusion between Company 2 and the government

Text: Company 1 argues for a different result here because the government allegedly subverted its ordinary criminal-subpoena power by colluding with Company 2 to obtain Company 1's documents, which the government could not have obtained directly from Company 1. According to Company 1, the government had a role in helping cause the documents, the foreign-based documents, to be brought ... to the United States. Had the government in the present case directed Company 2 to request documents from Company 1 in the Civil Litigation so that the government could then, in turn, subpoena those documents from Company 2, Company 1 would have a basis for arguing that the government had used civil discovery to subvert limitations on discovery in criminal cases. McSurely, 426 F.2d at 671-72. But the district court expressly found that there was no evidence that Company 2 engaged in discovery in the Civil Litigation at the behest of the government. Nor was there any evidence that the United States played any role in securing the documents of [Company 1] to be produced to [Company 2] in the civil litigation. Company 2's substantial interaction with the government, as detailed above, including Company 2's assistance to the government with the subpoenas and Company 2's updates regarding its civil-discovery progress, do not show that the government was directing Company 2's civil discovery. Rather, the cooperation between the parties reflects the fact that the government and Company 2 were assisting one another in advancing their independent but shared interests. Company 2, after all, has its own interest in redressing, through the civil-litigation process, the injuries that it alleges were caused by Company 1. We therefore see no basis to hold the district court's factual findings clearly erroneous. Company 1 attempts to counter the force of these findings by arguing that whether the United States gave specific direction to [Company 2] is a red herring. The Government did not need to do so to accomplish its purposes because it ... knew that [Company 2's] civil discovery would reach documents that the Government could not obtain by a grand jury subpoena ... or by an MLAT request. But what the government knew or could have predicted regarding Company 2's independent behavior in the Civil Litigation is irrelevant to the propriety of the government's actions. As the district court explained: If [Company 2] wishes to make such communications, it is not in any way prohibited from doing that, nor is the United States prohibited from asking for information from a victim of crime just because the victim is a corporation. Indeed, the United States is obligated, in enforcing the law, to request such information as is reasonably necessary to make it able to enforce the law. So long as the government did not improperly collude with Company 2 to obtain documents from Company 1, the government cannot be said to have used the civil-discovery process to subvert the limitations on its criminal-discovery powers. See In re: Grand Jury Subpoenas, 627 F.3d 1143, 1144 (9th Cir.2010) (reversing the district court's quashing of grand-jury subpoenas because [n]o collusion between the civil suitors and the government has been established). The district court thus did not abuse its discretion in determining that the subpoenas passed muster under Rule 17. And Company 1 has provided no basis for us to craft a new procedural rule in support of its position.