Court Opinion

ID: 9762557
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:26:22.210079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:35.454742
License: Public Domain

DOGGETT, Justice,
concurring.
Because its analysis and reasoning are correct I join in the majority opinion without reservation. I write separately, however, to respond to the dissenters who mask their inability to agree among themselves with competing rhetoric.1 In their zeal to implement their own preferred social policy that Texas corporations not be held responsible at home for harm caused abroad, these dissenters refuse to be restrained by either express statutory language or the compelling precedent, previously approved by this very court, holding that forum non conveniens does not apply in Texas. To accomplish the desired social engineering, they must invoke yet another legal fiction with a fancy name to shield alleged wrongdoers, the so-called doctrine of forum non conveniens. The refusal of a Texas corporation to confront a Texas judge and jury is to be labelled “inconvenient” when what is really involved is not convenience but connivance to avoid corporate accountability.
The dissenters are insistent that a jury of Texans be denied the opportunity to evaluate the conduct of a Texas corporation concerning decisions it made in Texas because the only ones allegedly hurt are foreigners. Fortunately Texans are not so provincial and narrow-minded as these dissenters presume. Our citizenry recognizes that a wrong does not fade away because its immediate consequences are first felt far away rather than close to home. Never have we been required to forfeit our membership in the human race in order to maintain our proud heritage as citizens of Texas.
The dissenters argue that it is inconvenient and unfair for farmworkers allegedly suffering permanent physical and mental injuries, including irreversible sterility, to seek redress by suing a multinational corporation in a court three blocks away from its world headquarters and another corporation, which operates in Texas this country’s largest chemical plant. Because the “doctrine” they advocate has nothing to do *681with fairness and convenience and everything to do with immunizing multinational corporations from accountability for their alleged torts causing injury abroad, I write separately.
I. THE FACTS
Respondents claim that while working on a banana plantation in Costa Rica for Standard Fruit Company, an American subsidiary of Dole Fresh Fruit Company, headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, they were required to handle dibromochloropro-pane [“DBCP”], a pesticide allegedly manufactured and furnished to Standard Fruit by Shell Oil Company [“Shell”] and Dow Chemical Company [“Dow”]. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of intent to cancel all food uses of DBCP on September 22, 1977. 42 Fed.Reg. 48026 (1977). It followed with an order suspending registrations of pesticides containing DBCP on November 3, 1977. 42 Fed.Reg. 57543 (1977). Before and after the E.P. A.’s ban of DBCP in the United States, Shell and Dow apparently shipped several hundred thousand gallons of the pesticide to Costa Rica for use by Standard Fruit. The Respondents, Domingo Castro Alfaro and other plantation workers, filed suit in a state district court in Houston, Texas, alleging that their handling of DBCP caused them serious personal injuries for which Shell and Dow were liable under the theories of products liability, strict liability and breach of warranty.
Rejecting an initial contest to its authority by Shell and Dow, the trial court found that it had jurisdiction under Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 71.031 (Vernon 1986), but dismissed the cause on the grounds of forum non conveniens. The court of appeals reversed and remanded, holding that Section 71.031 provides a foreign plaintiff with an absolute right to maintain a death or personal injury cause of action in Texas without being subject to forum non conve-niens dismissal. 751 S.W.2d 208. Shell and Dow have asked this court to reverse the judgment of the court of appeals and affirm the trial court’s dismissal.
Shell Oil Company is a multinational corporation with its world headquarters in Houston, Texas. Dow Chemical Company, though headquartered in Midland, Michigan, conducts extensive operations from its Dow Chemical USA building located in Houston. Dow operates this country’s largest chemical manufacturing plant within 60 miles of Houston in Freeport, Texas. The district court where this lawsuit was filed is three blocks away from Shell’s world headquarters, One Shell Plaza in downtown Houston.
Shell has stipulated that all of its more than 100,000 documents relating to DBCP are located or will be produced in Houston. Shell’s medical and scientific witnesses are in Houston. The majority of Dow’s documents and witnesses are located in Michigan, which is far closer to Houston (both in terms of geography and communications linkages) than to Costa Rica. The respondents have agreed to be available in Houston for independent medical examinations, for depositions and for trial. Most of the respondents’ treating doctors and co-workers have agreed to testify in Houston. Conversely, Shell and Dow have purportedly refused to make their witnesses available in Costa Rica.
The banana plantation workers allegedly injured by DBCP were employed by an American company on American-owned land and grew Dole bananas for export solely to American tables. The chemical allegedly rendering the workers sterile was researched, formulated, tested, manufactured, labeled and shipped by an American company in the United States to another American company. The decision to manufacture DBCP for distribution and use in the third world was made by these two American companies in their corporate offices in the United States. Yet now Shell and Dow argue that the one part of this equation that should not be American is the legal consequences of their actions.
*682II. FORUM NON CONVENIENS — “A COMMON LAW DOCTRINE OUT OF CONTROL”2
As a reading of Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 71.031 (Vernon 1986) makes clear, the doctrine of forum non conveniens has been statutorily abolished in Texas. The decision in Allen v. Bass, 47 S.W.2d 426 (Tex.Civ.App. — El Paso 1932, writ ref d), approved by this court, clearly holds that, upon a showing of personal jurisdiction over a defendant, article 4678, now section 71.031 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code, “opens the courts of this state to citizens of a neighboring state and gives them an absolute right to maintain a transitory action of the present nature and to try their cases in the courts of this state.” Id. at 427.
Displeased that Allen stands in the way of immunizing multinational corporations from suits seeking redress for their torts causing injury abroad, the dissenters doggedly attempt to circumvent this precedent.3 Unsuccessful with arguments based upon Texas law, they criticize the court for not justifying its result on public policy grounds.
A. USING THE “DOCTRINE” TO KILL THE LITIGATION ALTOGETHER
Both as a matter of law and of public policy, the doctrine of forum non conve-niens is without justification. The proffered foundations for it are “considerations of fundamental fairness and sensible and effective judicial administration.” Hecht dissent, 786 S.W.2d 703 (quoting Adkins v. Chicago, R.I. & Pac. R.R., 54 Ill.2d 511, 301 N.E.2d 729, 730 (1973)). In fact, the doctrine is favored by multinational defendants4 because a forum non conveniens dismissal is often outcome-determinative, effectively defeating the claim and denying the plaintiff recovery. The contorted result of the doctrine of forum non conve-niens is to force foreign plaintiffs “to con*683vince the court that it is more convenient to sue in the United States, while the American defendant argues that ... [the foreign court] is the more convenient forum.” Note Foreign Plaintiffs and Forum Non Conveniens: Going Beyond “Reyno”, 64 Texas L.Rev. 193, 215, nn. 144-46 (1985).
A forum non conveniens dismissal is often, in reality, a complete victory for the defendant. As noted in Irish Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Aer Dingus Teoranta, 739 F.2d 90, 91 (2d Cir.1984),
[i]n some instances, ... invocation of the doctrine will send the case to a jurisdiction which has imposed such severe monetary limitations on recovery as to eliminate the likelihood that the case will be tried. When it is obvious that this will occur, discussion of convenience of witnesses takes on a Kafkaesque quality— everyone knows that no witnesses ever will be called to testify.
In using the term forum non conveniens, “the courts have taken refuge in a euphemistic vocabulary, one that glosses over the harsh fact that such dismissal is outcome-determination in a high percentage of the forum non conveniens cases_” Robertson, Forum Non Conveniens in America and England: “A Rather Fantastic Fiction,” 103 L.Q.Rev. 398, 409 (1987). Empirical data available demonstrate that less than four percent of cases dismissed under the doctrine of forum non conveniens ever reach trial in a foreign court.5 A forum non conveniens dismissal usually will end the litigation altogether, effectively excusing any liability of the defendant. The plaintiffs leave the courtroom without having had their case resolved on the merits.6
B. THE GULF OIL FACTORS — BALANCED TOWARD THE DEFENDANT
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.
1. The Obsolete Private Interest Factors In their discussion of the private interest factors supposedly designed to promote *684convenience 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) (“[Mjodern 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 reexamined 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.
2. The Public Interest Factors
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.

a. The Interest of Texas

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 “[tjhe 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.
*685The 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
*686Specifically, 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.

b. Docket Backlog

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 conve-mens.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 státutory 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:
*687Making 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.

c. Judicial Comity

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. Ki-ano, 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.LJ. 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 be*688fore a consideration of the merits ever occurs.
III. PUBLIC POLICY & THE TORT LIABILITY OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN UNITED STATES COURTS
The abolition of forum non conveniens will further important public policy considerations by providing a check on the conduct of multinational corporations (MNCs). See Economic Approach, 22 Geo.WashJ. Int’l L. & Econ. at 241. The misconduct of even a few multinational corporations can affect untold millions around the world.12 For example, after the United States imposed a domestic ban on the sale of cancer-producing TRIS-treated children’s sleepwear, American companies exported approximately 2.4 million pieces to Africa, Asia and South America. A similar pattern occurred when a ban was proposed for baby pacifiers that had been linked to choking deaths in infants. Hazardous Exports, supra, 14 Sw.U.L.Rev. at 82. These examples of indifference by some corporations towards children abroad are not unusual.13
The allegations against Shell and Dow, if proven true, would not be unique, since production of many chemicals banned for domestic use has thereafter continued for foreign marketing.14 Professor Thomas McGarity, a respected authority in the field of environmental law, explained:
During the mid-1970s, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to restrict the use of some pesticides because of their environmental effects, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) established workplace exposure standards for toxic and hazardous substances in the manufacture of pesticides.... [I]t is clear that many pesticides that have been severely restricted in the United States are used without restriction in many Third World countries, with resulting harm to fieldworkers and the global environment.
McGarity, Bhopal and the Export of Hazardous Technologies, 20 Tex.Int’l L.J. 333, 334 (1985) (citations omitted). By 1976, “29 percent, or 161 million pounds, of all the *689pesticides exported by the United States were either unregistered or banned for domestic use.” McWilliams, Tom Sawyer’s Apology: A Reevaluation of United States Pesticide Export Policy, 8 Hastings Int’l & Comp.L.Rev. 61, 61 & n. 4 (1984). It is estimated that these pesticides poison 750,000 people in developing countries each year, of which 22,500 die. Id. at 62. Some estimates place the death toll from the “improper marketing of pesticides at 400,-000 lives a year.” Id. at 62 n. 7.
Some United States multinational corporations will undoubtedly continue to endanger human life and the environment with such activities until the economic consequences of these actions are such that it becomes unprofitable to operate in this manner. At present, the tort laws of many third world countries are not yet developed. An Economic Approach, supra, 22 Geo. Wash.J.Int’1 L. & Econ. at 222-23. Industrialization “is occurring faster than the development of domestic infrastructures necessary to deal with the problems associated with industry.” Exporting Hazardous Industries, supra, 20 Int’l L. & Pol. at 791. When a court dismisses a case against a United States multinational corporation, it often removes the most effective restraint on corporate misconduct. See An Economic Approach, supra, 22 Geo.Wash.J.Int’1 L. & Econ. at 241.
The doctrine of forum non conveniens is obsolete in a world in which markets are global and in which ecologists have documented the delicate balance of all life on this planet.. The parochial perspective embodied in the doctrine of forum non conve-niens enables corporations to evade legal control merely because they are transnational. This perspective ignores the reality that actions of our corporations affecting those abroad will also affect Texans. Although DBCP is banned from use within the United States, it and other similarly banned chemicals have been consumed by Texans eating foods imported from Costa Rica and elsewhere. See D. Weir & M. Schapiro, Circle of Poison 28-30, 77, 82-83 (1981).15 In the absence of meaningful tort liability in the United States for their actions, some multinational corporations will continue to operate without adequate regard for the human and environmental costs of their actions. This result cannot be allowed to repeat itself for decades to come.
As a matter of law and of public policy, the doctrine of forum non conveniens should be abolished. Accordingly, I concur.

. It is neither I nor the majority who find it necessary to have opinions or statutes "twisted." Gonzalez dissent, 786 S.W.2d 692. Today's majority merely reconfirms the action of the legislature in abolishing the doctrine of forum non conveniens. I do agree with Justice Gonzalez that "sweeping implementations of social welfare policy" are sought here — not by my concurrence but in the unswerving determination of the dissenters to protect the welfare of multinational corporations.
Not content to follow the law as it is, the dissenters create gloomy pictures of Texas without forum non conveniens. However, the public policy reasons they advance to circumvent the legislature’s intent are invalid. Justice Hecht then challenges the majority to state the advantages of abolishing forum non conveniens and justify its holding on the grounds of public policy. When I do so. Justice Gonzalez, in apparent disagreement with Justice Hecht, complains at my acceptance of the Hecht challenge.

. Stewart, Forum Non Conveniens: A Doctrine in Search of a Role, 74 Cal.L.Rev. 1259, 1264 n. 18 (1986).

. Justice Hecht argues that Allen is not controlling because it has not been subsequently followed. After citing the decisions of this court in Couch v. Chevron Int'l Co., 682 S.W.2d 534, 535 (Tex.1984) and Flaiz v. Moore, 359 S.W.2d 872, 876 (Tex.1962), he adopts a strange new reading of opinions, stating that "Couch and Flaiz unmistakably disapproved of Allen v. Bass without even bothering to cite it.” Hecht dissent, 786 S.W.2d 706. In Texas, we have not subscribed to the theory that opinions may be overruled without even informing anyone of such action. The doctrine of stare decisis is not usually discarded in such a cavalier manner through rejection of longstanding precedent by mere implication. Nothing said by the court in Couch is at all inconsistent with Allen. Rather, due to the appellate rules requiring preservation of error, this court never reached the issue of forum non conveniens in Couch. See Couch, 682 S.W.2d at. 535.
Justice Gonzalez disregards Allen principally by reliance upon Flaiz v. Moore, 359 S.W.2d 872 (Tex.1962). This court did not reach the issue of forum non conveniens in Flaiz:
It should be pointed out that we have not considered or attempted to decide in this case: (1) the extent to which the forum non conve-niens principle is recognized in Texas; (2) whether article 4678 is mandatory and deprives the court of any discretion....
359 S.W.2d at 876. Neither Couch nor Flaiz casts doubt upon the holding in Allen.
Justice Gonzalez next attempts to distinguish Allen by arguing that the only doctrine it involved was that of comity, not forum non con-veniens. A review of Allen and the subsequently refused application for writ of error indicates that the issue of forum non conveniens was presented and rejected. Even more ironic is the fact that Justice Gonzalez includes comity as one of his forum non conveniens public interest factors. See Gonzalez dissent, 786 S.W.2d 690.

.In an apparent attempt to gain access to favorable federal forum non conveniens rules and to avoid Texas procedural law, Shell and Dow removed this case to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas despite the clear absence of any basis for federal jurisdiction. United States District Judge DeAnda, in remanding the case, labeled Shell and Dow’s efforts to distinguish plainly controlling authority against removal “specious."
Over three years after the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit in Houston, Shell and Dow obtained a dismissal of the action on forum non conve-niens grounds. Extensive discovery had already been completed, interrogatories had ' already been answered by the individual plaintiffs and the individual plaintiffs had already agreed to appear in Houston for medical examinations and depositions. Many of the so-called "convenience" problems had already been resolved in this litigation prior to the dismissal under forum non conveniens.

. Professor David Robertson of the University of Texas School of Law attempted to discover the subsequent history of each reported transnational case dismissed under forum non conve-niens from Gulf Oil v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 67 S.Ct. 839, 91 L.Ed. 1055 (1947) to the end of 1984. Data was received on 55 personal injury cases and 30 commercial cases. Of the 55 personal injury cases, only one was actually tried in a foreign court. Only two of the 30 commercial cases reached trial. See Robertson, supra, at 419.

. Such a result in the name of "convenience” would undoubtedly follow a dismissal under forum non conveniens in the case at bar.
The plaintiffs, who earn approximately one dollar per hour working at the banana plantation, clearly cannot compete financially with Shell and Dow in carrying on the litigation. More importantly, the cost of just one trip to Houston to review the documents produced by Shell would exceed the estimated maximum possible recovery in Costa Rica. In an unchallenged affidavit, a senior Costa Rican labor judge stated that the maximum possible recovery in Costa Rica would approximate 100,000 colones, just over $1,080 at current exchange rates. Assuming such a recovery were possible, no lawyer, in Costa Rica or elsewhere, could afford to take such a case — against two giant corporations vigilantly defending themselves in litigation. Further, Costa Rica permits neither jury trials nor depositions of nonparty witnesses. Attempting to depose a Dow representative concerning the company’s knowledge of DBCP hazards will prove to be an impossible task as Dow is not required to produce that person in Costa Rica.
It is not unlikely that Shell and Dow seek a forum non conveniens dismissal not in pursuit of fairness and convenience, but rather as a shield against the litigation itself. If successful, Shell and Dow, like many American multinational corporations before them, would have secured a largely impenetrable shield against meaningful lawsuits for their alleged torts causing injury abroad.

. It is interesting that Justice Hecht pronounces the doctrine as one founded in considerations of "fundamental fairness," only to later reject the private factors — the doctrine’s only focus on fairness to the parties. Nevertheless, he clings to the so-called doctrine of convenience, claiming that "[t]he public factors, however, deserve the same consideration now as when Gulf Oil was written." 786 S.W.2d 708.

. Justice Cook seems to suggest that it may violate due process for Shell to be sued in Houston. It is an extremely novel holding, unprecedented in American constitutional law, that a corporation could be denied due process by being sued in its hometown. Justice Cook argues in his dissent that "the due process test has not developed answers ... to questions regarding considerations of fairness." He claims that forum non conveniens has ‘bridged the gap in the development of the due process test,” and concludes that “the majority shatters that bridge.” 786 S.W.2d 702. Justice Cook is wrong on both counts. The due process test in personal jurisdiction cases, although admittedly complex, is developing fully and quickly. Since 1977, the Supreme Court has decided eleven major personal jurisdiction cases. See e.g., Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Superior Court, 480 U.S. 102, 107 S.Ct. 1026, 94 L.Ed.2d 92 (1987); Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 105 S.Ct. 2965, 86 L.Ed.2d 628 (1985); Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 105 S.Ct. 2174, 85 L.Ed.2d 528 (1985); Helicopteros Nacionales de Columbia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S, 408, 104 S.Ct. 1868, 80 L.Ed.2d 404 (1984); Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 104 S.Ct. 1482, 79 L.Ed.2d 804 (1984); Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 104 S.Ct. 1473, 79 L.Ed.2d 790 (1984); Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. Campagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, 456 U.S. 694, 102 S.Ct. 2099, 72 L.Ed.2d 492 (1982); Rush v. Savchuk, 444 U.S. 320, 100 S.Ct. 571, 62 L.Ed.2d 516 (1980); World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 100 S.Ct. 559, 62 L.Ed.2d 490 (1980); Kulko v. Superior Court, 436 U.S. 84, 98 S.Ct. 1690, 56 L.Ed.2d 132 (1978); Shaffer v. Heitner, 433 U.S. 186, 97 S.Ct. 2569, 53 L.Ed.2d 683 (1977).
Justice Cook confuses two distinct issues in suggesting that forum non conveniens should be used to "bridge the gap” in the development of the due process test. Forum non conveniens is never considered until and unless the personal jurisdiction-due process determination is complete. See Gulf Oil, 330 U.S. at 504, 67 S.Ct. at 841. Justice Cook’s backward reasoning illustrates a significant problem with relying on the doctrine of forum non conveniens, explained by one commentator as follows:
Issues going to the existence of jurisdiction are conceptualised as turning on rules and principles which, however flexible and open-textured, lend an element of solidity that is wholly lacking for discretionary decisions to decline to exercise jurisdiction.... When judges have too much jurisdiction-declining discretion, they will inevitably not put in the hard work necessary to formulate and apply sensible jurisdictional rules. What has happened in American jurisprudence is a form of “buck passing" whereby the vague and amorphous “forum non conveniens doctrine has come to accomodate the collective shortcomings and excesses of modern rules governing jurisdiction, venue, and choice of law.”
Robertson, supra, 103 L.Q.Rev. at 424 (citations omitted). The use of the "doctrine" in other jurisdictions has produced an incoherent and disordered body of case law as judges often have ignored the law concerning in personam jurisdiction in favor of the unbridled discretion they enjoy in dismissing cases under forum non conveniens. See Stein, Forum Non Conveniens and 'the Redundancy of Court-Access Doctrine, 133 U.Pa.L.Rev. 781, 785 (1985) (forum non conveniens has resulted in “a crazy quilt of ad hoc, capricious, and inconsistent decisions.”). See also Stewart, Forum Non Conveniens: A Doctrine in Search of A Role, 74 Cal.L.Rev. 1259, 1324 (1986) (arguing that forum non conveniens should be abolished because “[tjhe factors and policies to which the doctrine calls the court’s attention ... are best considered in the jurisdictional contexts”). The “considerations of fairness” discussed by Justice Cook may best be achieved “by following the jurisdictional rules strictly rather than construing a malleable doc*686trine with virtually no appellate review to negate the formal jurisdictional rules.” Note, An Economic Approach to Forum Non Conveniens Dismissals Requested by U.S. Multinational Corporations, 22 Geo.Wash.J.Int’l L. & Econ. 215, 216 n. 11 (1988) [hereinafter "Economic Approach ”].

. Evidence from the most recent and largest national study ever performed regarding the pace of litigation in urban trial courts suggests that there is no empirical basis for the dissenters’ argument that Texas dockets will become clogged without forum non conveniens. The state of Massachusetts recognizes forum non conveniens. See Minnis v. Peebles, 24 Mass.App. 467, 510 N.E.2d 289 (1987). Conversely, the state of Louisiana has explicitly not recognized forum non conveniens since 1967. See Kassapas v. Arkon Shipping Agency, Inc., 485 So.2d 565, 567 (La.App.1986), writ denied, 488 So.2d 203 (1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 940, 107 S.Ct. 422, 93 L.Ed.2d 372 (1986); Trahan v. Phoenix Ins. Co., 200 So.2d 118, 122 (La.App.1967). Nevertheless, the study revealed the median filing-to-disposition time for tort cases in Boston to be 953 days; in New Orleans, with no forum non conveniens, the median time for the disposition of tort cases was only 405 days. The study revealed the median disposition time for contract cases in Boston to be 1580 days, as opposed to a mere 271 days in New Orleans where forum non conveniens is not used. J. Goerdt, C. Lomvardias, G. Gallas & B. Mahoney, Examining Court Delay — The Pace of Litigation in 26 Urban Trial Courts, 1987 20, 22 (1989).

. A senior vice-president of a United States multinational corporation acknowledged that "[t]he realization at corporate headquarters that liability for any [industrial] disaster would be decided in the U.S. courts, more than pressure from Third World governments, has forced companies to tighten safety procedures, upgrade plants, supervise maintenance more closely and educate workers and communities." Wall St. J., Nov. 26, 1985, at 22, col. 4 (quoting Harold Corbett, senior vice-president for environmental affairs at Monsanto Co.).

. Today’s opinions reveal the legal monstrosity that would be created in Texas if forum non conveniens were applied. Justice Hecht and Justice Gonzalez each predict dire consequences of a Texas without forum non conveniens. Chief Justice Phillips correctly admits that no such predictions can be supported. The doctrine has been developing for over 100 years, yet Justice Gonzalez asserts that the doctrine “was at best incipient among the states" until 1947. Justice Hecht states that Texas is “the only jurisdiction on earth” with the position taken today; however, earlier in the same opinion, he admits that ten states in the United States have not adopted forum non conveniens.
Each of the dissenters strongly advocates forum non conveniens for Texas. However, they cannot arrive at a collective decision regarding its application. While Justice Hecht correctly acknowledges that the private interest factors are outdated and useless, Justice Gonzalez and Chief Justice Phillips advocate both the private and public interest factors. While Justice Gonzalez correctly notes that before the doctrine may be applied, jurisdiction must be proper, Justice Cook argues that the doctrine is needed to help bridge the gap in the jurisdictional rules. The conflicting views of the dissenters surely portend the confused and unpredictable decisions which would inevitably result from attempts by Texas trial judges to apply the doctrine.

. As one commentator observed, U.S. multinational corporations
adhere to a double standard when operating abroad. The lack of stringent environmental regulations and worker safety standards abroad and the relaxed enforcement of such laws in industries using hazardous processes provide little incentive for [multinational corporations] to protect the safety of workers, to obtain liability insurance to guard against the hazard of product defects or toxic tort exposure, or to take precautions to minimize pollution to the environment. This double standard has caused catastrophic damages to the environment and to human lives.
Note, Exporting Hazardous Industries: Should American Standards Apply?, 20 Int’l L. & Pol. 777, 780-81 (1988) (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted) [hereinafter “Exporting Hazardous Industries"]. See also Diamond, The Path of Progress Racks the Third World, N.Y. Times, Dec. 12, 1984, at Bl, col. 1.

. A subsidiary of Sterling Drug Company advertised Winstrol, a synthetic male hormone severely restricted in the United States since it is associated with a number of side effects that the F.D.A. has called “virtually irreversible”, in a Brazilian medical journal, picturing a healthy boy and recommending the drug to combat poor appetite, fatigue and weight loss. U.S. Exports Banned, supra, 6 Int’l Tr.L.J. at 96. The same company is said to have marketed Dipy-rone, a painkiller causing a fatal blood disease and characterized by the American Medical Association as for use only as "a last resort," as “Novaldin” in the Dominican Republic. "Noval-din” was advertised in the Dominican Republic with pictures of a child smiling about its agreeable taste. Id. at 97. "In 1975, thirteen children in Brazil died after coming into contact with a toxic pesticide whose use had been severely restricted in this country." Hazardous Exports, supra, 14 Sw.U.L.Rev. at 82.

.Regarding Leptophos, a powerful and hazardous pesticide that was domestically banned, S. Jacob Scherr stated that
In 1975 alone, Velsicol, a Texas-based corporation exported 3,092,842 pounds of Leptop-hos to thirty countries. Over half of that was shipped to Egypt, a country with no procedures for pesticide regulation or tolerance setting. In December 1976, the Washington Post reported that Leptophos use in Egypt resulted in the death of a number of farmers and illness in rural communities.... But despite the accumulation of data on Leptophos’ severe neurotoxicity, Velsicol continued to market the product abroad for use on grain and vegetable crops while proclaiming the product’s safety.
U.S. Exports Banned, 6 Int’l Tr.LJ. at 96.

. Less than one per cent of the imported fruits and vegetables are inspected for pesticides. General Accounting Office, Pesticides: Better Sampling and Enforcement Needed on Imported Food GAO/RCED-86-219 (Sept. 26, 1986), at 3. The GAO found that of the 7.3 billion pounds of bananas imported into the F.D.A.’s Dallas District (covering Texas) from countries other than Mexico in 1984, not a single sample was checked for illegal pesticide residues such as DBCP. Id. at 53. Even when its meager inspection program discovers illegal pesticides, the F.D.A. rarely sanctions the shipper or producer.
Id. at 4. The GAO found only eight instances over a six year period where any punitive action whatsoever was taken. Id. "United States consumers have suffered as pesticide-treated crops are imported to the United States, thus completing a circle of poison.” McGarity, supra, 20 Tex.Int’1 L.J. at 334. As just one example, from 1972 to 1976 American imports of produce from Mexico contained residues of Leptophos, the neurotoxic pesticide discussed previously at note 14. U.S. Exports Banned, supra, 6 Int’l Tr.LJ. at 97 n. 19.