Court Opinion

ID: 9471994
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:46:27.168974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:41.289904
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would affirm because I am not persuaded that CIT Judge Watson abused his discretion. His decision has two things going for it this court does not mention. First, he conforms practice in his court to that of the ITC. We may say the ITC rule is not before us, yet we cannot overlook the anomaly that will exist if the court and the ITC enforce conflicting rules respecting the same documents. Second, the intervenors, original sources of the information in question, are willing for the court to allow disclosure to retained but not to in-house counsel. What they think is important because, if they consider the litigation is conducted in a manner unfair to them and in effect a nontariff barrier to their trade, they could withdraw their marbles from our game and invite their own government to take retaliatory action against United States trade.
Under all the circumstances, Judge Watson well may have thought whatever faults his disposition might suffer from — and hardly could he have imagined it was faultless — alternatives were worse. Factual inquiry into the relationship of in-house counsel with the makers of business policy in their companies, has an appearance, it cannot be denied, of greater fairness. One hopes, but does not much believe, it will not degenerate in practice into an invidious effort to throw doubt on the ability — if not the willingness — of certain members in *1470good standing of the CIT bar, who happen to be currently employed as in-house counsel, to resist pressures to violate protective orders or not to yield “inadvertently.” Not in this case, perhaps, but in cases for which this will be a precedent. At best a way is found to prolong the litigation and make it more costly. The CIT judge will have to lay out a pretty rigid method of trial of this issue, one that will keep things within seemly limits and not take forever to implement, thus limiting the damage to what is endurable.
I would be, on remand, inclined to consider seriously adoption of a simple alternative rule which our court majority also seems not to exclude, i.e., if a document is too sensitive to disclose to any counsel of record, in good standing as a member of the CIT bar, it is too sensitive to disclose to any or all other such counsel. This is, I suppose, rejected by the CIT on its theory, as explained by Judge Watson, that the second sentence of 19 U.S.C. § 1516a(b)(2)(B) nullifies the first once the court has examined the material in camera. Apparently the effect of the two sentences is believed to be to achieve practically nothing different from what Fed.R. Civ.P. 26 would effectuate if the Trade Agreements Act of 1979 had said nothing. The court majority here implies something different possibly to be the rule inasmuch as nothing in the second sentence requires grant of access to anyone. The supposed necessity of discriminating between retained and in-house counsel is, or may be, somewhat of a self-created dilemma. While the general rule is that sufficient necessity on the part of the discovering litigant will override any degree of sensitivity, this may not be so where § 1516a(b)(2)(B) is applicable. Such an interpretation would recognize the differences in litigation where foreign traders and governments are so strongly interested in the procedure as well as the outcome, and relieves Congress of the imputation of having enacted futile “weasel” words. The matter has not been briefed and I do not wish to seem to rule upon it, even if, writing as a minority, I could. It seems to me that, without discriminating among counsel or having to decide who is trustworthy, a court might find some other way of dealing with the problem. For example, a court appointed expert, acceptable to both sides for expertise and impartiality, might examine the documents and advise the court as to what they reveal, in sanitized terms sufficient to support a legal conclusion, yet not divulging business or trade secrets.
At any rate, the effect of the decision below, if it had stood, and if United States Steel had still refused to retain outside counsel as the CIT judge hoped it would, is not necessarily denial of justice to United States Steel, but a different thing, denial of the benefit of house counsel’s advocacy. If United States Steel’s counsel cannot examine these papers, it becomes incumbent on the court to examine them itself, in camera, and arrive at a just and lawful decision using its own very considerable intellectual powers. If this were the result, justice might possibly gain instead of losing, and I say this not meaning to denigrate the benefit to the court of adversary counsel’s advocacy. This is a benefit, a great one, but one the court, if it must, can do without.