Opinion ID: 775865
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Assessment of Conveniences

Text: 18 The deference given to a plaintiff's choice of forum does not dispose of a forum non conveniens motion. It is only the first level of inquiry. Even after determining whether the plaintiff's choice is entitled to more or less deference, a district court must still conduct the analysis set out in Gilbert, Koster, and Piper. 6 Initially, the court must consider whether an adequate alternative forum exists. If so, it must balance two sets of factors to ascertain whether the case should be adjudicated in the plaintiff's chosen forum or in the alternative forum proposed by the defendant. The first set of factors considered are the private interest factors--the convenience of the litigants. These include the relative ease of access to sources of proof; availability of compulsory process for attendance of unwilling, and the cost of obtaining attendance of willing, witnesses; possibility of view of premises, if view would be appropriate to the action; and all other practical problems that make trial of a case easy, expeditious and inexpensive. Gilbert, 330 U.S. at 508. In considering these factors, the court is necessarily engaged in a comparison between the hardships defendant would suffer through the retention of jurisdiction and the hardships the plaintiff would suffer as the result of dismissal and the obligation to bring suit in another country. Rather than simply characterizing the case as one in negligence, contract, or some other area of law, the court should focus on the precise issues that are likely to be actually tried, taking into consideration the convenience of the parties and the availability of witnesses and the evidence needed for the trial of these issues. In a suit alleging negligence, for example, the court might reach different results depending on whether the alleged negligence lay in the conduct of actors at the scene of the accident, or in the design or manufacture of equipment at a plant distant from the scene of the accident. The court should consider also whether the plaintiff's damages are genuinely in dispute and where the parties will have better access to the evidence relating to those damages. 19 The court also considers public interest factors. As the Supreme Court has explained: 20 Factors of public interest also have place in applying the doctrine. Administrative difficulties follow for courts when litigation is piled up in congested centers instead of being handled at its origin. Jury duty is a burden that ought not to be imposed upon the people of a community which has no relation to the litigation. In cases which touch the affairs of many persons, there is reason for holding the trial in their view and reach rather than in remote parts of the country where they can learn of it by report only. There is a local interest in having localized controversies decided at home. There is an appropriateness, too, in having the trial of a diversity case in a forum that is at home with the state law that must govern the case, rather than having a court in some other forum untangle problems in conflict of laws, and in law foreign to itself. 21 Id. 508-09, 67 S.Ct. 839. 22 Thus, while plaintiff's citizenship and residence can serve as a proxy for, or indication of, convenience, neither the plaintiff's citizenship nor residence, nor the degree of deference given to her choice of forum, necessarily controls the outcome. Alcoa S.S. Co., Inc., v. M/V Nordic Regent, 654 F.2d 147, 152, 154 (2d Cir. 1980) (en banc) (observing that American citizenship alone is not a barrier to dismissal on the ground of forum non conveniens) (summarizing the trend as away from according a talismanic significance to the citizenship or residence of the parties). There is no rigid rule of decision protecting U.S. citizen or resident plaintiffs from dismissal for forum non conveniens. Wiwa, 226 F.3d at 102. 23 As is implicit in the meaning of deference, the greater the degree of deference to which the plaintiff's choice of forum is entitled, the stronger a showing of inconvenience the defendant must make to prevail in securing forum non conveniens dismissal. At the same time, a lesser degree of deference to the plaintiff's choice bolsters the defendant's case but does not guarantee dismissal. A defendant does not carry the day simply by showing the existence of an adequate alternative forum. The action should be dismissed only if the chosen forum is shown to be genuinely inconvenient and the selected forum significantly preferable. In considering this point, the court furthermore must balance the greater convenience to the defendant of litigating in its preferred forum against any greater inconvenience to the plaintiff if the plaintiff is required to institute the suit in the defendant's preferred foreign jurisdiction. 24 Courts should be mindful that, just as plaintiffs sometimes choose a forum for forum-shopping reasons, defendants also may move for dismissal under the doctrine of forum non conveniens not because of genuine concern with convenience but because of similar forum-shopping reasons. District courts should therefore arm themselves with an appropriate degree of skepticism in assessing whether the defendant has demonstrated genuine inconvenience and a clear preferability of the foreign forum. And the greater the degree to which the plaintiff has chosen a forum where the defendant's witnesses and evidence are to be found, the harder it should be for the defendant to demonstrate inconvenience. 25