Court Opinion

ID: 9475392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:25:47.535381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:41.339930
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent from the decision of my brethren to affirm the judgment of the district court dismissing Ms. de Melo’s products liability claims against Lederle Laboratories on forum non conve-niens grounds.
A motion to dismiss on the basis of forum non conveniens shall not be granted unless an adequate alternative forum exists. Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 67 S.Ct. 839, 91 L.Ed. 1055 (1947). If the remedy provided by a proposed alternative forum is “so clearly inadequate or unsatisfactory that it is no remedy at all” *1065the proposed alternative forum may not be an adequate alternative. Piper Aircraft co. v. Reyno, 454 U.S. 235, 254 and n. 22, 102 S.Ct. 252, 265 and n. 22, 70 L.Ed.2d 419 (1981). The inquiry into whether an adequate alternative forum exists is a threshold issue that must be crossed before a court may weigh the public and private interests in a suit brought by a foreigner in the courts of the United States. Friends for All Children v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 717 F.2d 602, 606 (D.C.Cir.1983).
The evidence before the district court regarding the Brazilian legal system was presented by the parties and was conflicting in many respects: De Melo presented an affidavit from a Brazilian attorney, dos Santos. Lederle submitted a letter from another Brazilian attorney, Ibeas. Dos Santos and Ibeas agree that in Brazil there is no recovery for pain or suffering and that punitive damages are unknown. Ibeas stated that attorneys do take tort cases on a contingent basis. Dos Santos stated that de Melo would be unlikely to find an attorney willing to represent her on that basis. Dos Santos believes the case could take twenty years to be heard. Ibeas believes it will take two to five. Ibeas doubts de Melo could recover even $10,000 despite her permanent blindness. On this sketchy and contradictory evidence concerning applicable Brazilian law, I am unwilling to say that Brazil is an adequate alternative forum.1
At the same time, I am troubled by some of the silent assumptions lurking beneath the adequate alternative forum doctrine. The decision to hear a case ought not to depend on a subjective determination of whether another nation’s legal system is “adequate.” Adequate by what standards? Unfortunately, in litigation crossing national boundaries, comparisons of national legal systems must inevitably be drawn. My chief disagreement with the majority is that I would require more knowledge about a legal system before being willing to sanction the dismissal of a potentially meritorious suit and before entrusting that suit to another country’s legal system. Consequently, I would remand for a hearing to determine de Melo’s rights and Lederle’s responsibilities under Brazilian law.
With respect to the balance of both the private and public interests, the district court adopted an overly-narrow view of those interests. Lederle would be put to relatively little inconvenience in defending de Melo’s claim in the United States. Much of the documentary evidence is either in New York or under defendant’s control in Brazil. Discovery in Brazil would be no problem to the defendant, and even though it hints there might be third-party defendants in Brazil who could not be impleaded in the present action, there is no disavowal that it would be prevented from seeking contribution or indemnity in Brazil. Indeed, it could be argued that it would be more of a convenience to the defendant to try the case in the United States than in Brazil. Accordingly, we should heed the admonition in Gulf Oil Corp., 330 U.S. at 508, 67 S.Ct. at 843, that “unless the balance is strongly in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff’s choice of forum should rarely be disturbed.”
Finally, I cannot help observing that Led-erle is a multinational corporation. It has chosen to do business in Brazil. When such companies do business in foreign countries they should not, by that fact, manage to evade the force of American law. De Melo ingested the drug in Brazil. But the decision to warn of only temporary blindness occurred in the United States, and was made by United States citizens in the employ of a United States corporation. These facts suggest that the United States is the most appropriate forum to hear Ms. de Melo’s complaint.

. The district court was also apparently less than completely convinced that Brazilian law, unaided by the four conditions it placed upon the defendant, would provide an adequate alternative forum.