Court Opinion

ID: 9467371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:47:25.607829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:18.983790
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately.
I concur in the result. In doing so, however, I do not find it necessary to explore the jurisdictional distinctions and the intricacies of international law which bulk so large in the majority opinion.
This case was greatly simplified by the fact that no issue was presented with respect to the power of the Federal Trade Commission to compel the production by appellant corporation of documents located in the country of its nationality, France. The claim, rather, was only that the Corn-mission had not been clothed by Congress with the authority to serve its investigative subpoena by registered mail directed to appellant at its general corporate headquaters in Paris. Effective service of that subpoena, so it was argued by appellant, could only be made by personal service of it upon an officer or director of appellant within the United States.
The service of an investigative subpoena on a foreign national in a foreign country seems to me to be a sufficiently significant act as to require that Congress should speak to it clearly. I am not, therefore, prepared, as was the District Court, to infer the requisite authority from the breadth of Congress’s power to reach foreign documents in the exercise of its power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, or from a general delegation by Congress to the Commission of rulemaking authority.
In reaching this conclusion, I am impressed by the Congressional course of conduct in the area of providing for service of investigative demands abroad in the context of enforcement of our antitrust laws. For years it was apparently deemed necessary by the Department of Justice to serve its investigative demands upon officers or directors of foreign corporations found in the United States — as appellant concedes the Commission could have done in this case. In 1976, however, Congress acted to authorize the service of the Department’s civil investigative demands on foreign nationals “in such manner as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure prescribe for service in a foreign country.” 15 U.S.C. § 1312(d)(2). Service by registered mail in a foreign country is encompassed in that grant of authority.
It is also quite significant, I believe, with respect to the issue of Congressional pur*1328pose and intent now before us, that after this case was finally taken under submission on February 14,1980, Congress enacted Public Law 96-252, effective May 28, 1980, the “Federal Trade Commission Improvements Act of 1980,” which, among other things, gave to the Commission, in language virtually identical to that used in 1976 with respect to the Department of Justice, the same power to serve a civil investigative demand upon a foreign national abroad by registered mail.