Court Opinion

ID: 9482494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:52:00.525374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:01.815897
License: Public Domain

RUTH B. GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
with whom EDWARDS, Circuit Judge, concurs, concurring in the denial of suggestion for rehearing en banc:
In the panel’s endeavor to untangle skeins in this emotionally, but not elegantly, pleaded case, all three judges gave a telescoped view of an important circuit precedent, Naartex Consulting Corp. v. Watt, 722 F.2d 779 (D.C.Cir.1983), cert. denied sub nom. Naartex Consulting Corp. v. Clark, 467 U.S. 1210, 104 S.Ct. 2399, 81 L.Ed.2d 355 (1984). To assure that neither the court’s opinion nor the concurring/dissenting statement is read as a modification of Naartex, I write to reiterate what the court faced, said, and held in that leading case.
Our court in Naartex did not confront, as we did here, a district court’s flat denial of all discovery relevant to personal jurisdiction. The critical passage in Naartex reads: *1401Naartex, 722 F.2d at 788 (citations omitted; emphasis supplied). Naartex, a case in which “ample opportunity” for discovery had already been allowed, is not dispositive of the case before us, one in which no discovery was ever allowed. A request for additional discovery should not be confused with a plea for initial discovery.
*1400Naartex next asserts that the district court committed reversible error by denying permission to conduct additional discovery for the purpose of establishing personal jurisdiction.... The district court did not abuse its discretion when, as here, Naartex had “ample opportunity” to take discovery ... and the pleadings contained no allegations of specific facts that could establish the requisite contacts with the District....
*1401The complaint in this case adequately, if inartfully, tied Popkin’s conduct to that of his client, Spitz, and to the criminal investigations of Edmond and Lyles. Cf. Dioguardi v. Durning, 139 F.2d 774 (2d Cir.1944). Enough was said to warrant threshold discovery. See Complaint para. 46 (alleging that Popkin, by letter, stated that the criminal investigations would be stopped if Edmond and Lyles dropped their suit against Spitz).1 The Serian Affidavit on which the panel concentrated should not have led us to lose sight of the district court’s first and fundamental error. The ruling on personal jurisdiction over Popkin was premature in the absence of any discovery; in keeping with Naartex, that ruling should have abided a fair opportunity for plaintiffs to pursue discovery keyed to the issue of personal jurisdiction. See Crane v. Carr, 814 F.2d 758 (D.C.Cir.1987); Crane v. New York Zoological Society, 894 F.2d 454 (D.C.Cir.1990) (later proceeding in same case). If the dismissal Popkin gained after successfully opposing any discovery was thus improper, that error warrants correction and renders moot the alleged post-dismissal “foul” on which Judge Silberman fastens.2

. The complaint contains no similar allegation regarding appellee Wolf.

. I share Judge Silberman’s view that enough must be alleged to warrant threshold discovery (baldly charging "conspiracy” will not do), and I am grateful to him for causing me to set out correctly what we confronted and held in Naar-tex and Crane. Finally, in making this explicit statement on the prematurity of the dismissal Popkin gained, I recall that "[w]isdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.” Henslee v. Union Planters Nat'l Bank & Trust Co., 335 U.S. 595, 600, 69 S.Ct. 290, 292, 93 L.Ed. 259 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).