Opinion ID: 176129
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Is a Writ of Mandamus Appropriate?

Text: Even though we lack interlocutory jurisdiction to review the district court's order, a writ of mandamus may still be appropriate. However, we invoke this extraordinary remedy only in exceptional circumstances amounting to a judicial usurpation of power, or a clear abuse of discretion. Cheney v. U.S. Dist. Court for Dist. of Columbia, 542 U.S. 367, 380, 124 S.Ct. 2576, 159 L.Ed.2d 459 (2004) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). A writ of mandamus is a drastic and extraordinary remedy reserved for really extraordinary causes. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted); see also City of New York, 607 F.3d at 943. To issue the writ, three conditions must be satisfied: (1) the party seeking issuance of the writ must have no other adequate means to attain the relief it desires; (2) the issuing court, in the exercise of its discretion, must be satisfied that the writ is appropriate under the circumstances; and (3) the petitioner must demonstrate that the right of issuance of the writ is clear and indisputable. City of New York, 607 F.3d at 932-33, quoting Cheney, 542 U.S. at 380-81, 124 S.Ct. 2576 (brackets omitted). The writ is appropriate here because no adequate alternative remedies are available, the issue involved is novel and significant and its resolution will aid the administration of justice, and Appellants have shown a clear and indisputable right to the writ, because the district court's order undeniably failed to weigh properly the privacy interests at stake against the SEC's right to disclosure. Specifically, the district court failed to ascertain the legality of the wiretaps at issue, a critical factor in determining how to weigh the competing interests. Further, it ordered a wholesale disclosure of the wiretaps without regard to the relevancy of particular recordings, another factor that necessarily informs an assessment of weight.
Despite the SEC's argument to the contrary, the privacy interests harmed by the disclosure order here could not be adequately remedied on final appeal. In Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, 121 S.Ct. 1753, 149 L.Ed.2d 787 (2001), the Supreme Court noted that the disclosure of the contents of a private conversation can be an even greater intrusion on privacy than the interception itself. As a result, there is a valid independent justification for prohibiting such disclosures by persons who lawfully obtained access to the contents of an illegally intercepted message, even if that prohibition does not play a significant role in preventing such interceptions from occurring in the first place. Id. at 533, 121 S.Ct. 1753 (emphasis added). Similarly, in Gelbard v. United States, 408 U.S. 41, 92 S.Ct. 2357, 33 L.Ed.2d 179 (1972), the Court noted that [c]ontrary to the Government's assertion that the invasion of privacy is over and done with, to compel the testimony of [ ] witnesses compounds the statutorily proscribed invasion of their privacy by adding to the injury of the interception the insult of compelled disclosure. Id. at 51-52, 92 S.Ct. 2357. In short, there is a distinct privacy right against the disclosure of wiretapped private communications that is separate and apart from the privacy right against the interception of such communications. Because suppressing illegally intercepted evidence, or finding the discovery order erroneous on appeal of a final judgment, would not remedy the harm done to the right against disclosure, we find that, at least in the context of the instant case, the right to prevent unauthorized disclosure of intercepted communications could not be adequately vindicated on final appeal. As in City of New York, any sensitive information contained in the [recordings] will, upon final judgment, already have been exposed. 607 F.3d at 934 (finding appeal from final judgment inadequate to review disclosure of police reports) (internal quotation marks omitted). The tapes will have been listened to, and the privacy rights of the parties to the conversations will forever have been harmed by the very act of exposure. In the instant case, the harm to this interest is compounded by the fact that the ordered disclosure affects the rights of numerous innocent parties, who will have even their irrelevant conversations disclosed to the SEC and other parties, whose constitutional and statutory rights may already have been violated should the wiretaps prove to have been illegal, and who will have no means of vindicating their privacy rights in any final appeal. The SEC's heavy reliance on United States v. Miller, 14 F.3d 761 (2d Cir.1994), for the proposition that an order disclosing wiretap evidence can be adequately remedied on direct appeal is misplaced. In Miller, we did find that final review was adequate to vindicate the privacy rights at issue in certain defendants' appeal of the denial of motions to prohibit the entry of wiretapped conversations into evidence. In Miller, however, the tapes at issue had already been played at the defendants' public trials after a judicial determination that the interceptions had been lawful. Id. at 764. In addition, of the two defendants involved in Miller, one had already been found guilty and sentenced, and the other had been convicted and awaited sentencing. Id. at 762-63. There was no reason to hear an appeal before sentencing instead of after it. More fundamentally, however, the defendant's right against disclosure was not at issue; illegally obtained or not, the conversations had already been disclosed to the public. See id. at 764 (finding defendants' appeal moot because the tapes ... have already been played at... trial). Indeed, we noted in Miller that because the conversations had been played at trial, the `cat [was] out of the bag' so to speak, and there [was] no way the trial court or this Court [could] put it back in. Id. Unlike Miller, where the only relevant privacy right at issue was the right against unlawful interception, in the instant case the cat is not yet out of the bag, and we must consider both the Appellants' (and others') rights against unlawful interception and their rights against the initial disclosure. Once the cat is out of the bag, the right against disclosure cannot later be vindicated. This finding, of course, does not mean that a writ of mandamus will always be appropriate to remedy an erroneous disclosure order. The other elements of the test for the appropriateness of the writ must still be met. However, given the particular circumstances of this case, where the privacy rights of hundreds of parties are at issue, the legality of the interceptions has not yet been decided, and the disclosure order encompasses both relevant and irrelevant conversations, we find final review would be an inadequate alternative remedy. [7]
While we have expressed reluctance to issue writs of mandamus to overturn discovery rulings, see, e.g., City of New York, 607 F.3d at 939 (internal quotation marks omitted), when a discovery question is of extraordinary significance or there is extreme need for reversal of the district court's mandate before the case goes to judgment, the writ of mandamus provides an escape hatch from the finality rule. In re von Bulow, 828 F.2d 94, 97 (2d Cir.1987) (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). A writ of mandamus is appropriate to review a pretrial discovery order if the petitioner demonstrates `the presence of a novel and significant question of law ... and ... the presence of a legal issue whose resolution will aid in the administration of justice.'  City of New York, 607 F.3d at 939, quoting United States v. Coppa, 267 F.3d 132, 137-38 (2d Cir.2001); see also In re Sims, 534 F.3d 117, 128-29 (2d Cir.2008). We conclude that the writ is appropriate in the circumstances of this case, because the petition raises a novel and significant question of lawspecifically, when a civil discovery order requiring defendants to disclose wiretap materials to a civil enforcement agency would be appropriate and resolving that issue will aid in the administration of justice. See City of New York, 607 F.3d at 939-43; see also Coppa, 267 F.3d at 137-38. While we have addressed the propriety of disclosures of wiretap evidence in civil proceedings before, our prior cases have never involved the circumstances here: where there are parallel civil and criminal trials, where the government has disclosed materials to a criminal defendant, where the legality of the wiretaps has yet to be adjudicated, and where a civil enforcement agency suing the defendant in parallel proceedings seeks access to these materials from the defendant. The issues in this appeal are therefore clearly novel. In addition, given the importance of both the privacy rights at stake and the public interest in civil enforcement of the law, these issues are also significant. Cf. City of New York, 607 F.3d at 941-42. Resolving the issues in this appeal would also aid in the administration of justice by helping district courts avoid erroneous discovery orders in the future. As we stated in City of New York, we have previously recognized that the resolution of a novel and significant privilege question in a mandamus proceeding will `aid the administration of justice.' Addressing the merits of this petition ... may `forestall future error in trial courts' by correcting a privilege determination with a potentially broad applicability and influence. Id. at 942, quoting von Bulow, 828 F.2d at 99.
A district court abuses its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence, or if it has rendered a decision that `cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions.' Sims, 534 F.3d at 132 (citations omitted). We will issue the writ only if a district court committed a clear and indisputable abuse of its discretion in one of these ways. See City of New York, 607 F.3d at 929. As we explain below, it is clear and indisputable that, given the privacy interests at stake, the district court's decision ordering disclosure of the wiretap conversations prior to any ruling on the legality of the interceptions and without limiting the disclosure to relevant conversations cannot be located within the range of permissible decisions. A writ of mandamus is therefore appropriate. Below, we first examine whether Appellants are correct that Title III prohibits all pre-trial discovery disclosure orders in civil proceedings. Because, as we have previously ruled, Title III does not prohibit all that it does not permit, and because there is an independent civil discovery right of access to such materials in the hands of a private litigant, we reject that argument. It does not follow, however, that such materials should always be disclosed. We find that, when addressing whether or not to order disclosure of wiretap materials in civil discovery, a district court must balance the privacy interests at stake against the right of access at issue in the case. We conclude that, in the instant case, the district court clearly exceeded its discretion in conducting that balancing, because the privacy interests at stake in the instant case, at least at this stage of the litigation, clearly outweigh the right of access. [8]