Opinion ID: 2381510
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the gulf oil factorsbalanced toward the defendant

Text: Courts today usually apply forum non conveniens by use of the factors set forth at length in Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 508-09, 67 S.Ct. 839, 843-44, 91 L.Ed. 1055 (1947). Briefly summarized, those factors are (i) the private interests of the litigants (ease and cost of access to documents and witnesses); and (ii) the public interest factors (the interest of the forum state, the burden on the courts, and notions of judicial comity). In the forty-three years in which the courts have grappled with the Gulf Oil factors, it has become increasingly apparent that their application fails to promote fairness and convenience. Instead, these factors have been used by defendants to achieve objectives violative of public policy.
In their discussion of the private interest factors supposedly designed to promote convenience and fairness, the dissenters choose to avoid entire bodies of law concerning jurisdiction and venue. The dissenters ignore 154 years of Texas venue law designed to give defendants the privilege of being sued in their home country. See Langley, A Suggested Revision of the Texas Venue Statute, 30 Tex.L.Rev. 547, 547 (1952). Texas has generated more case law concerning venue than the other forty-nine states combined and has recently enacted a new venue statute. See Note, Venue Procedure in Texas: An Analysis of the 1983 Amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure Governing Venue Practice Under the New Venue Statute, 36 Baylor L.Rev. 241, 242 n. 13, 253 (1984). It is ironic that defendants for years have sought to preserve a right to be sued in a home country, yet Shell nevertheless argues that when it is sued in its hometown, the legal fiction of forum non conveniens is needed to ensure convenience and fairness. In his dissent, Justice Gonzalez correctly crystalizes the private interest factors as those considerations that make the trial of a case relatively easy, expeditious, and inexpensive for the parties. 786 S.W.2d 695. Advances in transportation and communications technology have rendered the private factors largely irrelevant: A forum is not necessarily inconvenient because of its distance from pertinent parties or places if it is readily accessible in a few hours of air travel. It will often be quicker and less expensive to transfer a witness or a document than to transfer a lawsuit. Jet travel and satellite communications have significantly altered the meaning of non conveniens. Calavo Growers of California v. Belgium, 632 F.2d 963, 969 (2d Cir.1980) (Newman J., concurring). See also McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U.S. 220, 223, 78 S.Ct. 199, 201, 2 L.Ed.2d 223 (1957) ([M]odern transportation and communication have made it much less burdensome for a party sued to defend himself in a State where he engages in economic activity.). One judge asked whether the entire doctrine of forum non conveniens should not be re-examined in the light of the transportation revolution that has occurred since [ Gulf Oil]. Fitzgerald v. Texaco, Inc., 521 F.2d 448, 456 (2d Cir.1975) (Oakes, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1052, 96 S.Ct. 781, 46 L.Ed.2d 641 (1976). Even Justice Hecht, in his dissent, recognizes that these factors have been rendered largely obsolete: Ease of travel and communication, availability of evidence by videotape and facsimile transmission, and other technological advances have reduced the significance of some private inconvenience factors. 786 S.W.2d 708. [7] In sum, the private factors are no longer a predominant considerationfairness and convenience to the parties have been thrust out of the forum non conveniens equation. As the doctrine is now applied, the term forum non conveniens has clearly become a misnomer.
The three public interest factors asserted by Justice Gonzalez may be summarized as (1) whether the interests of the jurisdiction are sufficient to justify entertaining the lawsuit; (2) the potential for docket backlog; and (3) judicial comity.
The dissenting members of the court falsely attempt to paint a picture of Texas becoming an irresistable forum for all mass disaster lawsuits, Gonzalez dissent, 786 S.W.2d 690, and for personal injury cases from around the world, Hecht dissent, 786 S.W.2d 707. They suggest that our citizens will be forced to hear cases in which [t]he interest of Texas in these disputes is likely to be ... slight, Cook dissent, 786 S.W.2d 697. Although these suppositions undoubtedly will serve to stir public debate, they have little basis in fact. The dissenting justices each know that for a Texas jury to hear a case, Texas must obtain in personam jurisdiction over the defendants in question. See Gulf Oil, 330 U.S. at 504, 67 S.Ct. at 841 ([T]he doctrine of forum non conveniens can never apply if there is an absence of jurisdiction or mistake of venue.). As Justice Cook correctly notes, a state's power to assert its jurisdiction is limited by the due process clause of the United States Constitution. In International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 158, 90 L.Ed. 95 (1945), the United States Supreme Court held that a state may exercise in personam jurisdiction only when a defendant has certain minimum contacts with it such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend `traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.' Id. (quoting Milliken v. Meyer, 311 U.S. 457, 463, 61 S.Ct. 339, 342, 85 L.Ed. 278 (1940)). Under Schlobohm v. Schapiro, 784 S.W.2d 355 (Tex.1990), a defendant must have sufficient contacts with Texas in each lawsuit such that the assertion of jurisdiction comports with fair play and substantial justice. Due process mandates that these requirements be satisfied before a Texas court may assert jurisdiction over a defendant. The personal jurisdiction-due process analysis will ensure that Texas has a sufficient interest in each case entertained in our state's courts. [8] Specifically, Texas has a substantial interest in the case at bar. As stated previously, this suit has been filed against Shell, a corporation with its world headquarters in Texas, doing extensive business in Texas and manufacturing chemicals in Texas. The suit arose out of alleged acts occurring in Texas and alleged decisions made in Texas. The suit also has been filed against Dow, a corporation with its headquarters in Michigan, but apparently having substantial contacts with Texas. Dow operates the country's largest chemical plant in Texas, manufacturing chemicals within sixty miles of the largest population center in Texas, where millions of Texans reside. Shell and Dow cannot now seek to avoid the Texas civil justice system and a jury of Texans.
The next justification offered by the dissenters for invoking the legal fiction of inconvenience is that judges will be overworked. Not only will foreigners take our jobs, as we are told in the popular press; now they will have our courts. The xenophobic suggestion that foreigners will take over our courts forcing our residents to wait in the corridors of our courthouses while foreign causes of action are tried, Gonzalez dissent, 786 S.W.2d at 690, is both misleading and false. It is the height of deception to suggest that docket backlogs in our state's urban centers are caused by so-called foreign litigation. This assertion is unsubstantiated empirically both in Texas and in other jurisdictions rejecting forum non conveniens. [9] Ten states, including Texas, have not recognized the doctrine. Within these states, there is no evidence that the docket congestion predicted by the dissenters has actually occurred. The best evidence, of course, comes from Texas itself. Although foreign citizens have enjoyed the statutory right to sue defendants living or doing business here since the 1913 enactment of the predecessor to Section 71.031 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, reaffirmed in the 1932 decision in Allen, Texas has not been flooded by foreign causes of action. Moreover, the United States Supreme Court has indicated that docket congestion is a wholly inappropriate consideration in virtually every other context. Robertson, supra, 103 L.Q.Rev. at 408. See Thermtron Products, Inc. v. Hermansdorfer, 423 U.S. 336, 344-45, 96 S.Ct. 584, 589-90, 46 L.Ed.2d 542 (1976) (remanding a case to state court because the federal court considers itself too busy to try it is improper). See also United States v. Reliable Transfer Co., 421 U.S. 397, 408, 95 S.Ct. 1708, 1714, 44 L.Ed.2d 251 (1975) (Congestion in the courts cannot justify a legal rule that produces unjust results in litigation....). If we begin to refuse to hear lawsuits properly filed in Texas because they are sure to require time, we set a precedent that can be employed to deny Texans access to these same courts. Nor does forum non conveniens afford a panacea for eradicating congestion: Making the place of trial turn on a largely imponderable exercise of judicial discretion is extremely costly. Even the strongest proponents of the most suitable forum approach concede that it is inappropriately time-consuming and wasteful for the parties to have to litigate in order to determine where they shall litigate. If forum non conveniens outcomes are not predictable, such litigation is bound to occur.... In terms of delay, expense, uncertainty, and a fundamental loss of judicial accountability, the most suitable forum version of forum non conveniens clearly costs more than it is worth. Robertson, supra, 103 L.Q.Rev. at 414, 426.
Comitydeference shown to the interests of the foreign forumis a consideration best achieved by rejecting forum non conveniens. Comity is not achieved when the United States allows its multinational corporations to adhere to a double standard when operating abroad and subsequently refuses to hold them accountable for those actions. As S. Jacob Scherr, Senior Project Attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, has noted There is a sense of outrage on the part of many poor countries where citizens are the most vulnerable to exports of hazardous drugs, pesticides and food products. At the 1977 meeting of the UNEP Governing Council, Dr. J.C. Kiano, the Kenyan minister for water development, warned that developing nations will no longer tolerate being used as dumping grounds for products that had not been adequately tested and that their peoples should not be used as guinea pigs for determining the safety of chemicals. Comment, U.S. Exports Banned For Domestic Use, But Exported to Third World Countries, 6 Int'l Tr.L.J. 95, 98 (1980-81) [hereinafter U.S. Exports Banned ]. Comity is best achieved by avoiding the possibility of `incurring the wrath and distrust of the Third World as it increasingly recognizes that it is being used as the industrial world's garbage can.' Note, Hazardous Exports From A Human Rights Perspective, 14 Sw.U.L.Rev. 81, 101 (1983) [hereinafter Hazardous Exports ] (quoting Hon. Michael D. Barnes (Representative in Congress representing Maryland)). [10] The factors announced in Gulf Oil fail to achieve fairness and convenience. The public interest factors are designed to favor dismissal and do little to promote the efficient administration of justice. It is clear that the application of forum non conveniens would produce muddled and unpredictable case law, [11] and would be used by defendants to terminate litigation before a consideration of the merits ever occurs.