Court Opinion

ID: 9448194
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:25:09.253542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:19.198101
License: Public Domain

BURGER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Our courts have consistently considered themselves bound to recognize the acts of other sovereign states within their own territories even when those acts violated our own concepts of basic fairness and due process. As the majority opinion points out we have gone so far as to recognize the obnoxious decrees *927of Nazi Germany expropriating property of German nationals on the basis of racial origins. See Bernstein v. Van Heyghen Freres S.A., 2 Cir., 163 F.2d 246, 249, certiorari denied 1947, 332 U. S. 772, 68 S.Ct. 88, 92 L.Ed. 357.
But I do not think we should carry the act of state doctrine to the point where we permit a foreign state to come into our courts as a suitor and secure equitable relief on better or different terms than those available to an American litigant in the same courts.
Cuba here sought the extraordinary equitable relief of an injunction and an accounting from Pons who, as an agent of Cuba, held property of that country. Pons freely acknowledged the claims of Cuba and has paid the fund into the registry of the court, but he demands that Cuba account to him for his property in its possession. Relying on the act of state doctrine, Cuba insists that our courts accord to it the extraordinary equitable relief it seeks but denies our right to require Cuba to comply with doctrines of equity which would govern an American citizen suing in this court for an accounting.
I would not so far modify the law as to say we will render reciprocal justice to Cuba on the same standards its government-of-the-moment employs, for that would debase any legal system. But I think we should apply to Cuba, or to any other suitor, whether an individual or a sovereign state, all the conditions incident to equitable relief. No citation of authority is required to support the proposition that in a suit for an accounting where the moving party asks the court to settle accounts between the parties, that moving party has the obligation to render an account to the other litigant according to equitable principles. To allow Cuba to withdraw the impounded funds from the jurisdiction of this court without meeting the duty to account to Pons is to decide this case without trying it. At the very least appellant is entitled to require appellee to meet with the formal requirements of an accounting with all impounded funds held intact pending final outcome of the litigation.
“If a sovereign state goes into court seeking its assistance, it is in accord with the best principles of modern law that it should be obliged to submit to the jurisdiction in respect to a set-off or counterclaim properly assertable as a defense in a similar suit between private litigants. * * * Where a sovereign voluntarily litigates, he must play the role of a litigant like any other suitor and abide by the consequences.'” United States v. National City Bank, 2 Cir., 83 F.2d 236, 238, certiorari denied 1936, 299 U.S. 563, 57 S.Ct. 25, 81 L.Ed. 414.
The majority notes that the United States Departments of State and Justice have not acted on our invitation to file briefs if they or either of them desired. Perhaps that was because they regard this as private litigation for disposition under established principles of the law of equity and not as litigation having any other implications. Cf. National City Bank of New York v. Republic of China, 1955, 348 U.S. 356, 75 S.Ct. 423, 99 L.Ed. 389.
I would remand1 the case for trial under equitable rules governing accounting suits and hold all funds in the registry of the court until an accounting is made by both litigants under the familiar rules of equity jurisprudence. If that delays indefinitely the settlement of the accounts between the parties that will be by the appellee’s choice.

. See illuminating opinion of Judge Edward J. Dimock in Banco Nacional De Cuba v. Sabbatino, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 193 F. Supp. 375.