Opinion ID: 75793
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Errors in the District Court's Analysis

Text: 33 The district court's narrow reading of Sibaja is unpersuasive. As an initial matter, we reject the court's contention that the phrases under the circumstances presented here and in this case were meant to circumscribe the opinion's ambit. As discussed, Sibaja places the forum non conveniens doctrine within the larger context of the federal judiciary's inherent power ... to control the administration of the litigation before it and to oversee access to its courts. Sibaja, 757 F.2d at 1218. That is, forum non conveniens is a particular species contained within the larger genus of inherent powers held by the federal courts to supervise the administration and management of their proceedings. Read against this backdrop, the word circumstances in the phrase under the circumstances presented here refers to forum non conveniens. That is, the Sibaja court meant that forum non conveniens was the particular circumstance of the federal judiciary's inherent power to administer and manage its proceedings that was at issue in that case. The phraseology in no way implies that in one instance federal courts should apply the federal forum non conveniens standard, in the other a particular state standard, based on the particular results that will obtain. 34 Additionally, we read the phrase in this case as words of description, not words of limitation. Put differently, the phrase is descriptive, not normative. It serves to contextualize the opinion, but it in no way signals that district courts ought to revisit, on a case-by-case basis, the question of whether state or federal law on forum non conveniens should apply in diversity cases, especially in light of the strong countervailing federal interests identified by the Sibaja opinion. 35 Aside from our concerns over how the district court parsed the text of Sibaja, we take issue with the district court's crabbed reading of the federal interests at stake in the forum non conveniens context. Indeed, the district court circumscribed the federal interests involved, stating in effect that there is only one federal interest at stake that need be considered. The court found that the sole interest of a federal court in this area is its interest in restricting access to the federal court docket to prevent a floodgate of foreign suits best filed elsewhere. 36 We reject this reductionist model. While the result of the forum non conveniens doctrine may be to restrict access to the federal docket, this result is reached only after a complex inquiry that takes into account several competing public and private interests at stake, including the private interest of the plaintiff in having access to a federal forum. See Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 508, 67 S.Ct. 839, 843, 91 L.Ed. 1055 (1947) (noting that the forum non conveniens analysis should include inquiry into the private interest of the litigant). The district court's constricted account of the doctrine erases this multifaceted inquiry and reduces the issue to one of mere docket policing. Several cases buttress the fact that forum non conveniens is a multi-sided doctrine in which no one interest is dominant or dispositive of the analysis. See Piper Aircraft, 454 U.S. at 249-50, 102 S.Ct. at 263 (noting that [i]f central emphasis were placed on any one factor, the forum non conveniens doctrine would lose much of the very flexibility that makes it so valuable); La Seguridad, 707 F.2d at 1307 (stating that controlling weight cannot be given to any one factor in the balancing process). In light of such precedent, it is clear that the district court's analysis is flawed because it tries to pigeonhole forum non conveniens: the doctrine takes into account the interest in preventing federal docket congestion, but it cannot be reduced to that. See Piper Aircraft, 454 U.S. at 241 n. 6, 102 S.Ct. at 258 n. 6 (listing the administrative difficulties flowing from court congestion as only one of the considerations taken into account under the federal forum non conveniens doctrine). 37 We point out, furthermore, that there are several affirmative federal interests undergirding the federal forum non conveniens doctrine that cannot be explained away as concern over restricting access to the federal courts. Even if we ignore the countervailing federal interest in restricting access to the federal docket, the federal interests that we are about to discuss are sufficient, standing alone, to trump outcome-determinative state law on forum non conveniens. 38 We first point out the federal interest in ensuring that, as a general rule, United States citizens have access to the courts of this country for resolution of their disputes. There is a strong federal interest in making sure that plaintiffs who are United States citizens generally get to choose an American forum for bringing suit, rather than having their case relegated to a foreign jurisdiction. This interest is taken into account by the federal forum non conveniens standard. See Koster v. (American) Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co., 330 U.S. 518, 524, 67 S.Ct. 828, 831-32, 91 L.Ed. 1067 (1947) (stating that there is good reason why ... [a case] should be tried in the plaintiff's home forum if that has been his choice and that a real showing of convenience by a plaintiff who has sued in his home forum will normally outweigh the inconvenience the defendant may have shown); Gilbert, 330 U.S. at 508, 67 S.Ct. at 843 (noting that unless the balance is strongly in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff's choice of forum should rarely be disturbed). 15 This federal interest is reflected in La Seguridad, where we noted that there is a strong presumption against disturbing plaintiffs' initial forum choice. La Seguridad, 707 F.2d at 1307. It also motivated our statement in that case that before a plaintiff's forum choice can be unsettled, the district court must evaluate and determine that an adequate alternative forum exists which possesses jurisdiction over the whole case. Id. 39 The district court's position is inconsistent with the federal interest we have delineated. As noted, the district court's position is that courts are only to consider the federal interest in restricting access to the docket in deciding whether to apply state or federal forum non conveniens law. If that position were adopted, it would mean that the federal standard only applies when it is more likely than the state standard to lead to dismissal of the plaintiff's diversity suit. Conversely, the state standard only would apply when it is more likely than the federal standard to lead to dismissal. In addition to the patent unfairness of such a scheme, the district court's approach would defeat the federal judiciary's interest in making sure that American plaintiffs normally have access to a forum in this country to resolve their disputes. We refuse to countenance such a result. 40 We now turn to another important federal interest at stake in the forum non conveniens context, the federal government's interest in foreign relations. The unique interest of the federal government in the area of foreign relations has been reiterated time and again by the Supreme Court. 16 It is clear, moreover, that foreign relations are implicated in the forum non conveniens calculus. See Rivendell, 2 F.3d at 992 (noting the important federal interest[] involved as a result of the foreign policy implications of forum non conveniens decisions); Exxon Corp. v. Chick Kam Choo, 817 F.2d 307, 320 (5th Cir.1987), rev'd on other grounds, 486 U.S. 140, 108 S.Ct. 1684, 100 L.Ed.2d 127 (1988) (referring to the transnational and international nature of the interests at stake in a forum non conveniens inquiry). 41 Several examples demonstrate how foreign relations come into play in the forum non conveniens context. For instance, in deciding whether a case should be dismissed because a foreign jurisdiction is more suitable, federal courts necessarily must analyze the interest that the foreign country has in the dispute, an analysis that may raise issues of international comity. Federal courts also must consider whether the foreign jurisdiction provides an adequate alternative forum for the plaintiff, which may require a court to consider whether the law of the foreign country provides more than a remedy ... [that] is so clearly inadequate or unsatisfactory that it is no remedy at all. Piper Aircraft, 454 U.S. at 254, 102 S.Ct. at 265. In some cases, moreover, federal courts may have to address arguments presented by a foreign sovereign that has intervened or filed an amicus brief. In such cases, the sovereign may allege that the case will impair its national economic or policy interests if the case is allowed to proceed in the United States. These are but a few of the ways in which issues of foreign relations arise in the forum non conveniens area. The presence of such issues militates in favor of a federal standard for the doctrine in diversity cases. See Rivendell, 2 F.3d at 992 (adopting federal standard in part because of the foreign affairs implications of forum non conveniens ). Given the dominant federal role in the foreign relations arena, the federal judiciary needs to have the flexibility to fashion its own forum non conveniens doctrine that takes full account of the foreign policy concerns at stake, irrespective of whether a given case comes before the court on federal question or diversity grounds. 42 We also draw attention to a third federal interest that is at stake — protection of a national, unified set of venue rules within the federal judicial system. See In re Air Crash, 821 F.2d at 1158 (adopting federal standard on forum non conveniens for diversity cases in part to protect the internal consistency and administration of the federal system). This unified set of venue rules is reflected most clearly in 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), which states that [f]or the convenience of parties and witnesses, in the interest of justice, a district court may transfer any civil action to any other district or division where it might have been brought. 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). Application of a state standard on forum non conveniens that is different from the federal standard, however, leads to an analysis that is analytically inconsistent with § 1404(a). 43 The analytical inconsistency can be demonstrated by focusing on the Florida forum non conveniens standard, which only considers the contacts that a lawsuit has with the State of Florida. The Florida standard, if applied in federal court, would require the district court to ignore the contacts the suit might have with other states in the determination of whether dismissal is appropriate. In contrast, a thorough analysis under § 1404(a) necessarily requires that the district court consider the contacts that a lawsuit has with any of the fifty states to determine if the case should be transferred there. In other words, a seamless system of national venue rules requires federal courts to look to the connections a lawsuit has with the entire United States. Application of a state standard like Florida's, therefore, would require an analysis by the district court that is incongruent with the analysis required under § 1404(a). 17 See Parsons v. Chesapeake & Ohio Ry. Co., 375 U.S. 71, 73-74, 84 S.Ct. 185, 187, 11 L.Ed.2d 137 (1963) (noting that different factual considerations may be involved in a state court's dismissal on forum non conveniens grounds and a federal court's transfer of a suit under § 1404(a)). It follows that to preserve the federal interest in having an internally consistent, national set of venue rules, the federal forum non conveniens standard should be applied in diversity cases. 44 Irrespective of the federal judiciary's interest in protecting the court docket from a flood of foreign suits, the three countervailing federal interests we have enunciated justify the application of federal, rather than state, law in the forum non conveniens context. The district court, however, did provide one additional reason for why Florida law ought to apply that we have not yet confronted. In its order, the district court alleged that its constricted reading of Sibaja was appropriate because it fulfilled the dual aims of Erie, the prevention of forum shopping and of the inequitable administration of the laws. See Hanna, 380 U.S. at 468, 85 S.Ct. at 1142 (noting the aims of Erie ). 45 The dual aims of Erie cannot save the district court's position. We note, as an initial matter, that these dual aims already are incorporated into the step of the Erie analysis that addresses whether application of state law would affect the outcome of the suit. 18 The Supreme Court in Gasperini indicated that the dual aims of Erie were addressed through this inquiry into whether state law is outcome determinative. See id. at 428 n. 8, 116 S.Ct. at 2220 n. 8. Yet, as we have explained, even if state law is outcome determinative, federal law still may control if there is a countervailing federal interest at stake. Id. at 432, 116 S.Ct. at 2222; Byrd, 356 U.S. at 537, 78 S.Ct. at 901. Hence, because Sibaja and our own analysis in this case show that strong federal interests trump state law in the forum non conveniens context, there is no reason to revive the question of whether the dual aims of Erie have been satisfied. 46 Nevertheless, we do point out that the district court's position does not in itself prevent forum shopping and the inequitable administration of justice. Rather, the court's opinion merely replaces one form of forum shopping with another and generates its own type of inequitable administration. The district court's holding still would encourage plaintiffs to forum shop, just not between state courts and federal courts sitting in the same state. Plaintiffs instead would be encouraged to forum shop between district courts in different states, since different forum non conveniens standards would apply to federal districts based on the particular state within which a district was located. Furthermore, the district court's disposition creates its own inequities. By concluding that state law on forum non conveniens only applies in diversity cases when it is more restrictive than federal law, the district court created a rule whereby federal courts are always to apply the standard that is most hostile to the plaintiff's forum choice. Such an outcome is particularly inappropriate in light of the strong presumption against disturbing plaintiffs' initial forum choice. La Seguridad, 707 F.2d at 1307. In sum, then, we conclude the district court's recourse to the dual aims of Erie does not alter our decision that the court misconstrued Sibaja and erred by applying state forum non conveniens law.