Opinion ID: 793234
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does the government have other adequate means to attain relief?

Text: 22 Discovery orders are generally interlocutory and nonappealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Admiral Ins. Co., 881 F.2d at 1490. Appellate review under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) is also unavailable because the district court did not certify the issue for appellate review. 23 Defendants maintain, however, that mandamus relief is inappropriate because the government could refuse to comply with the district court's discovery order and appeal the resulting sanction. This argument finds support in the basic principle that while discovery orders themselves are not generally final for purposes of section 1291, parties who face such an order have the option of making the decision final simply by refusing to comply, and appealing the resulting sanction. United States v. Fernandez, 231 F.3d 1240, 1245 (9th Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted); United States v. Ryan, 402 U.S. 530, 533, 91 S.Ct. 1580, 29 L.Ed.2d 85 (1971) ([O]ne who seeks to resist the production of desired information [must choose] between compliance with a trial court's order to produce prior to any review of that order, and resistance to that order with the concomitant possibility of an adjudication of contempt if his claims are rejected on appeal. (citation omitted)). 24 We have explicitly rejected this argument, however, where discovery is directed at third-parties who could not be expected to incur a contempt citation. SG Cowen, 189 F.3d at 913-14 ( citing In re Grand Jury Subpoena 92-1(SJ), 31 F.3d 826, 829 (9th Cir.1994)). While we recognized that a petitioner could refuse to comply with the discovery orders directed at it [,] and then appeal from the contempt order, we reasoned that third-party witnesses were unlikely to do so. Id. (emphasis added). Because most of the district court's discovery orders in SG Cowen were directed at third-parties, we concluded that the defendant had no alternative remedy for purposes of the first Bauman factor. Id.; Delorean, 717 F.2d at 481 (granting mandamus relief from a district court's discovery order without requiring the government to first violate the order and pursue a direct appeal under § 1291). 25 While defendants cite to Fernandez for support, Fernandez only provides an example of a situation where the district court sanctioned the government for failing to comply with a discovery order, thereby producing an appealable final order. Fernandez, 231 F.3d at 1245. It does not, however, hold that a party must incur a sanction, such as contempt, before it may seek mandamus relief. See id. Moreover, Fernandez can also be distinguished from the case at bar on the grounds that the government itself was the subject of the discovery order, and therefore, could have refused to comply and thus incurred sanctions. By contrast, the discovery order in this case is directed at third-party witnesses who may choose to comply with the district court's discovery order rather than risk a contempt citation, thereby leaving the government with no alternative grounds for relief. See SG Cowen, 189 F.3d at 913-14. Accordingly, the first factor weighs in favor of granting the government's petition. 26