MARCUS, Circuit Judge:
This appeal arises out of a foreign shipping contract billing dispute between Consorcio Ecuatoriano de Telecomunicaciones S.A. ("CONECEL") and Jet Air Service Equador S.A. ("JASE"). CONECEL filed an application in the Southern District of Florida under 28 U.S.C. § 1782 to obtain discovery for use in foreign proceedings in Ecuador. According to CONECEL, the foreign proceedings include both a pending arbitration brought by JASE against CONECEL for non-payment under the contract, and contemplated civil and private criminal suits CONECEL might bring against two of its former employees who, CONECEL claims, may have violated Ecuador's collusion laws in connection with processing and approving JASE's allegedly inflated invoices. CONECEL's application seeks discovery from JASE's United States counterpart, JAS Forwarding (USA), Inc. ("JAS USA"), which does business in Miami and was involved in the invoicing operations at issue in the dispute. The district court granted the application and authorized CONECEL to issue a subpoena. Thereafter, JASE intervened and moved to quash the subpoena and vacate the order granting the application. The district court denied the motion, as well as a subsequent motion for reconsideration. JASE now appeals the denial of both.
CONECEL and JASE have had a lengthy contractual relationship that reaches back at least a decade.
CONECEL says that the agreements between the parties provided that CONECEL would pay the rate specified by the agreements (in terms of dollars per unit of weight) multiplied by the weight of the shipment. CONECEL contends that JASE introduced an "extra-contractual multiplication factor" into the equation, which "varied from shipment to shipment based on factors that are not known to CONECEL."
CONECEL reports that an internal investigation and audit has led it to believe that two of its former employees, Lucy Egas Ribadeneira ("Egas") and Germania Narváez ("Narváez"), had a hand in the overbilling scheme. The two former employees allegedly "participated in the processing and approval of JAS Ecuador's invoices during the relevant period and ... there are indications that Ribadeneira and Narváez may be liable to CONECEL for its damages." CONECEL adds that its contemplated civil action for collusion
Not surprisingly, JASE tells a wholly different story. It claims that in 2008 CONECEL failed to pay several invoices. Pursuant to the contractual agreements between the parties, JASE has pursued arbitration in Ecuador before the Center for Arbitration and Conciliation of the Guayaquil Chamber of Commerce. CONECEL's primary defense in the pending arbitration proceeding is that the invoices do not correspond to the parties' agreed-upon price.
On July 14, 2010, CONECEL filed an ex parte application for judicial assistance in the Southern District of Florida in order to obtain evidence pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782. Section 1782 provides in relevant part:
28 U.S.C. § 1782(a).
CONECEL's detailed application, accompanied by two declarations and a memorandum of law, sought evidence from JAS USA relating primarily to the invoicing and calculation of rates charged to CONECEL.
On July 20, 2010, the district court granted the ex parte application and authorized CONECEL to issue and serve a subpoena on JAS USA seeking the discovery outlined in CONECEL's application. JASE moved to intervene to vacate the order granting the application. After full briefing, the district court permitted the intervention but denied the motion to vacate.
The district court began its analysis by addressing the "primary disputed issue" of "whether the subpoenaed documents will be used in a proceeding [in] a foreign or international tribunal." The court observed that, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, section 1782 does not require that the foreign proceeding be pending or imminent, but rather only that the proceeding "be within reasonable contemplation." Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 542 U.S. 241, 259, 124 S.Ct. 2466, 159 L.Ed.2d 355 (2004). The district court determined that CONECEL had "established that the civil and criminal actions are within reasonable contemplation." Having concluded that CONECEL's civil and criminal suits against its two former employees were within reasonable contemplation, the district court did not have to reach the question of whether the pending arbitration between JASE and CONECEL was a proceeding in a foreign tribunal under the statute. The court did observe, however, that "upon a review of the case law, the Court finds that the arbitral tribunal, in this action, is likely within the purview of section 1782."
Finally, as for JASE's argument that the application should have been denied anyway because CONECEL sought confidential materials, the district court rejected the claim this way:
JASE moved for reconsideration; the district court denied the motion, concluding that it appeared to be nothing more than an effort to relitigate matters that the court had already decided. This timely
A district court's decision to honor or deny a section 1782 discovery request is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United Kingdom v. United States, 238 F.3d 1312, 1319 (11th Cir.2001). This deferential standard is identical to the one we use when reviewing a district court's ordinary discovery rulings, including rulings such as whether the foundation for a claim of privilege has been established. Id. To the extent the district court's decision is based on an interpretation of law, however, our review is de novo. Id. at 1319 n. 8. Thus, we review de novo the district court's interpretation of a federal statute like section 1782. In re Clerici, 481 F.3d 1324, 1331 (11th Cir.2007). Finally, we review the district court's denial of a motion for reconsideration only for abuse of discretion. Richardson v. Johnson, 598 F.3d 734, 740 (11th Cir.2010) (per curiam); Sanderlin v. Seminole Tribe of Fla., 243 F.3d 1282, 1285 (11th Cir.2001).
Three issues are raised in this appeal: first, whether there is a "proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal," 28 U.S.C. § 1782(a), for which CONECEL sought discovery; second, assuming the statutory requirements have been met, whether the district court nonetheless abused its discretion in granting the application because the disclosures would reveal confidential pricing information; and, third, whether the court abused its discretion in denying JASE's motion for reconsideration. We take each issue in turn. We emphasize, however, that this appeal is not about whether JASE actually overbilled CONECEL, with or without the collusion of CONECEL's former employees; or whether CONECEL owes JASE any money under the contracts between the parties; or, finally, whether any other underlying dispute among the parties and related persons has merit. Like the district court, we have no occasion to address any of these issues, which will likely be resolved in various tribunals in Ecuador.
A district court has the authority to grant an application for judicial assistance under section 1782 if four statutory requirements are met:
In re Clerici, 481 F.3d at 1331-32 (footnote omitted) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1782(a)). JASE does not dispute that requirements (1), (2), and (4) have been met here. As a party to the dispute, CONECEL plainly is an "interested person"; CONECEL's application seeks evidence in the form of document production and deposition testimony; and the application seeks discovery from JAS USA, which has an office and does business in Miami and is therefore "found in the district of the district court ruling on the application for assistance" — namely, the Southern District of Florida.
At issue is the third requirement — that the evidence sought must be for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal. JASE claims that there is no such proceeding. CONECEL advances
Although an issue of first impression in this Circuit, the determination of whether a foreign arbitration falls within the scope of section 1782 is guided in substantial measure by the Supreme Court's seminal decision in Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 542 U.S. 241, 124 S.Ct. 2466, 159 L.Ed.2d 355 (2004). Most significantly for our purposes, the Court in Intel emphasized the breadth of the statutory term "tribunal." In discussing the legislative history of section 1782, Justice Ginsburg, writing for the Court, observed that Congress in 1964 introduced the word "tribunal" into the statute to replace the previous version's term "judicial proceeding," quoting with approval from a Senate Report "explain[ing] that Congress introduced the word `tribunal' to ensure that `assistance is not confined to proceedings before conventional courts,' but extends also to `administrative and quasi-judicial proceedings.'" Id. at 248-49, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (quoting S.Rep. No. 88-1580, at 7 (1964), reprinted in 1964 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3782, 3788). And then, in determining whether the Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission was a "tribunal" under the statute, the Supreme Court reiterated that the legislative change from the phrase "any judicial proceeding" to the current phrase — "a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal" — was intended to "provide the possibility of U.S. judicial assistance in connection with administrative and quasi-judicial proceedings abroad." Id. at 258, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). As the Supreme Court noted, "[w]hen Congress acts to amend a statute, we presume it intends its amendment to have real and substantial effect." Id. at 258-59, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (quoting Stone v. INS, 514 U.S. 386, 397, 115 S.Ct. 1537, 131 L.Ed.2d 465 (1995)).
Moreover, the Court quoted with approval the following broad definition of "tribunal" set forth by a leading scholar on international procedure: "[t]he term `tribunal'... includes investigating magistrates, administrative and arbitral tribunals, and quasi-judicial agencies, as well as conventional civil, commercial, criminal, and administrative courts." Id. at 258, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (alterations in original) (emphasis added) (quoting Hans Smit, International Litigation Under the United States Code, 65 Colum. L.Rev. 1015, 1026 n.71 (1965)).
Thus, while the Supreme Court in Intel was not tasked with specifically deciding whether a private arbitral tribunal falls under the statute, its broad functional construction of the term "tribunal" provides us with substantial guidance. Consistent with this functional approach, we examine the characteristics of the arbitral body at issue, in particular whether the arbitral panel acts as a first-instance adjudicative decisionmaker, whether it permits the gathering and submission of evidence, whether it has the authority to determine liability and impose penalties, and whether its decision is subject to judicial review. See id. at 255 & n. 9, 257-58, 124 S.Ct. 2466; see also In re Winning (HK) Shipping Co., 2010 WL 1796579, *7 (S.D.Fla. April 30, 2010) ("Intel suggests that courts should examine the nature of the arbitral body at issue to determine whether it functions as a `foreign tribunal' for purposes of section 1782."); In re Roz Trading Ltd., 469 F.Supp.2d 1221, 1228 (N.D.Ga.2006) ("Where a body makes adjudicative decisions responsive to a complaint and reviewable in court, it falls within the widely accepted definition of `tribunal,' the reasoning of Intel, and the scope of § 1782(a) ....").
The pending arbitration between JASE and CONECEL meets the functional criteria articulated in Intel. In connection with its section 1782 application, CONECEL submitted declarations from its Ecuadorian counsel explaining that the arbitral panel has the "authority to receive evidence, resolve the dispute, and award a binding decision." The declaration further states that after the conclusion of the arbitration proceedings,
The declaration also opined that "another possible option is to attack an arbitral award through an extraordinary action of protection provided for in the new Constitution of 2008." This kind of constitutional attack on the arbitral award is "made before the Constitutional Court," and the action would be viable if "a guaranteed
Notably, JASE does not contest that the arbitral tribunal at issue is a first-instance decisionmaking body that can receive evidence and bind the parties with its ruling; it only contests whether the arbitral tribunal's decision is subject to judicial review. JASE submitted in the district court its own declaration from Ecuadorian counsel stating only that "[t]he sum and substance of [arbitrators'] rulings, including determinations of fact and law are not reviewable by appeal."
The parties' declarations are in no way inconsistent. JASE's declaration does not dispute that the award of the arbitral panel is subject to nullification based on procedural defects in the arbitration proceeding and to constitutional attack if the constitutional rights of one of the parties has been violated. The opposing declarations read together demonstrate that judicial review of arbitration awards in Ecuador, much like a federal court's review of an arbitration award, is focused primarily on addressing defects in the arbitration proceeding, not on providing a second bite at the substantive apple that would defeat the purpose of electing to pursue arbitration in the first instance. Cf. 9 U.S.C. § 10(a) (providing that a district court may vacate an arbitration award where the award was procured by corruption or fraud, where the arbitrators were partial or corrupt, where misbehavior by the arbitrators prejudiced the rights of any party, or where the arbitrators exceeded their powers); Hall St. Assocs., L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U.S. 576, 578, 128 S.Ct. 1396, 170 L.Ed.2d 254 (2008) (holding that "the statutory grounds" for judicial review in the Federal Arbitration Act "are exclusive," and may not be supplemented by contract); White Springs Agric. Chems., Inc. v. Glawson Invs. Corp., 660 F.3d 1277, 1280 (11th Cir. 2011) ("Because these Sections [9 U.S.C. §§ 10-11] are the exclusive means for upsetting an arbitration award, a panel's incorrect legal conclusion is not grounds for vacating or modifying the award.").
One could not seriously argue that, because domestic arbitration awards are only reviewable in court for limited reasons (notably excluding a second look at the substance of the arbitral determination), this amounts to no judicial review at all. As the Supreme Court has expressly recognized, the Federal Arbitration Act provides the exclusive statutory grounds for "expedited judicial review." Hall St., 552 U.S. at 578, 128 S.Ct. 1396 (emphasis added). Yet JASE urges us, for section 1782 purposes, to conclude that the functional requirement of being subject to judicial review is only satisfied when the sum and substance of the arbitral body's decision is subject to full judicial reconsideration on the merits. This definition is far too stringent, and we can discern no sound reason to depart from the common sense understanding that an arbitral award is subject to judicial review when a court can enforce the award or can upset it on the basis of
Our inquiry does not end with the statutory requirements. The law is clear that "a district court is not required to grant a § 1782(a) discovery application simply because it has the authority to do so." Intel, 542 U.S. at 264, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (citing United Kingdom, 238 F.3d at 1319). Thus, JASE argues that, even if the statutory requirements have been met, the district court abused its discretion in granting CONECEL's application anyway.
Section 1782 is the product of over 150 years of congressional effort to provide federal-court assistance in gathering evidence for use in foreign tribunals. See id. at 247-49, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (reviewing at some length the history of congressional efforts to provide judicial assistance to foreign tribunals and developments designed to broaden the scope of federal courts' power to respond to foreign or international discovery requests). "The history of Section 1782 reveals Congress' wish to strengthen the power of district courts to respond to requests for international assistance." Lo Ka Chun v. Lo To, 858 F.2d 1564, 1565 (11th Cir.1988). Accordingly, as we have said, "[w]hether, and to what extent, to honor a request for assistance pursuant to § 1782 has been committed by Congress to the sound discretion of the district court" and "this court may overturn the district court's decision only for abuse of discretion." United Kingdom, 238 F.3d at 1318-19. We have further made clear that "[t]his deferential standard is identical to that used in reviewing the district court's ordinary discovery rulings." Id. at 1319; cf. Harris v. Chapman, 97 F.3d 499, 506 (11th Cir.1996) ("District judges are accorded wide discretion in ruling upon discovery motions, and appellate review is accordingly deferential.").
Interpreting the Supreme Court's decision in Intel, a panel of this Court already has spelled out four factors that should be considered by the district court in exercising its discretion:
In re Clerici, 481 F.3d at 1334 (citation omitted) (quoting Intel, 542 U.S. at 264-65, 124 S.Ct. 2466). JASE's argument that the district court abused its discretion only focuses on the fourth factor. JASE claims that CONECEL's request for discovery from JAS USA is overbroad and improperly seeks confidential and proprietary information related to how both JAS USA and JASE price their services.
The main problem with JASE's claim is that it fails to provide us with any sound basis for overturning the district court's exercise of discretion or for upending the
Id. at 1385.
CONECEL's discovery requests in the instant section 1782 application were undeniably relevant to CONECEL's defense in the pending arbitration. CONECEL's defense in the arbitration is based on establishing that JASE overbilled in violation of the contractual arrangement between the parties. Evidence in JAS USA's possession relating to, for example, "the rates charged or to be charged to CONECEL" or "the procedure or methodology for applying the rates to be charged to CONECEL" is plainly relevant to this defense. Moreover, we find unpersuasive JASE's unsubstantiated claim that JAS USA's compliance with the subpoena would require the disclosure of confidential pricing information that would harm its competitiveness in the marketplace. On its face, CONECEL's application does not seek general price information from JASE or JAS USA or information about how JASE or JAS USA bills any other clients besides CONECEL. Rather, every request in the application that bears on pricing information uses language limiting the request to information relating directly to CONECEL, such as "the rates charged or to be charged to CONECEL," or "services provided by JAS Ecuador or its affiliates to CONECEL," or "billing or invoicing to CONECEL," or "services rendered ... in connection with shipments to CONECEL." The district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the subpoena requests information that "relates directly to the contract at issue" and was "narrowly tailored."
Moreover, JASE does not appear to have taken any steps to meet CONECEL somewhere in the middle or to narrow the discovery request in any particular way; rather, it has taken an all-or-nothing approach seeking to remove JAS USA from the burden of having to produce any documents or deposition testimony, even those that seem unambiguously relevant. We have previously recognized that such an approach is problematic:
In re Clerici, 481 F.3d at 1335.
The Seventh Circuit has raised similar concerns about all-or-nothing discovery challenges in the course of reversing a district court's complete denial of a section 1782 application as an abuse of discretion:
Heraeus Kulzer, GmbH v. Biomet, Inc., 633 F.3d 591, 597-98 (7th Cir.2011); see also id. at 598 (noting that the district court's denial of any discovery "was all the more unreasonable because Biomet had refused to meet with Heraeus to negotiate a reduction in the amount of discovery sought" and because of Biomet's "refusal to present any evidence of the burdens that granting Heraeus's discovery request would impose"). These concerns are persuasive. In this case, JASE has failed to identify which particular discovery requests in CONECEL's application are unduly burdensome or to provide any specific evidence to support its blanket claim that JAS USA should be exempted from having to comply with any and all discovery obligations due to overarching concerns about confidentiality that are stated only at the highest order of abstraction.
Finally, JASE suggests that the district court erred because its order denying the motion to vacate did not contain a sufficiently detailed analysis of JASE's arguments about confidential price information. This argument too is without merit. The district court considered the motions and pertinent parts of the record, correctly identified the four Intel factors that guide the exercise of its discretion, correctly observed that JASE objected to the production of purportedly confidential pricing information, and then made the determination that it "disagree[d]" with JASE's confidentiality claim and further found "the Subpoena narrowly tailored and not unduly intrusive or burdensome." We can discern no abuse of discretion in any of these findings.
JASE's final claim is that the district court erred in denying its motion for reconsideration under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59 and 60.
Waddell v. Hendry Cnty. Sheriff's Office, 329 F.3d 1300, 1309 (11th Cir.2003) (citing Toole v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 235 F.3d 1307, 1316 (11th Cir.2000)).
The newly discovered evidence that JASE brought to the district court's attention was an April 2011 action filed in Ecuador by Egas, one of the two former CONECEL employees discussed in the section 1782 application. Egas's suit seeks damages from CONECEL for slander based on CONECEL's allegations of her wrongdoing in this section 1782 application. JASE met the first three factors of the Waddell analysis because the evidence was new, discovered with due diligence, and not cumulative. The district court order denying JASE's initial motion to vacate the order granting the section 1782 application was issued in April 2011, the same month that Egas commenced her lawsuit in Ecuador. JASE promptly brought the new evidence to the attention of the district court by filing a timely motion for reconsideration in May 2011.
But JASE's evidence falls short under the fourth and fifth Waddell factors. JASE claims that Egas's suit establishes that any potential civil action by CONECEL against its former employees would be baseless and without merit, thereby confirming that there were no reasonably contemplated proceedings and that CONECEL's section 1782 application was merely a fishing expedition designed to harass JASE and JAS USA. But we cannot simply assume that the allegations in Egas's lawsuit are true and the allegations in CONECEL's section 1782 application are false. Like the district court, we are in no position to assess the merits of either CONECEL's potential suit against Egas or Egas's retaliatory suit for slander. More importantly, the Egas lawsuit has no bearing on our holding that the pending arbitration between JASE and CONECEL satisfies the requirements of section 1782. Evidence of Egas's slander lawsuit is immaterial to the outcome of this case.
In short, JASE's newly discovered evidence proffered in its motion for reconsideration was not material evidence nor evidence that would have probably changed the outcome of the district court's decision. See Waddell, 329 F.3d at 1309. Indeed, the bulk of JASE's motion for reconsideration just reiterated JASE's already-rejected arguments. The district court, therefore, acted entirely within its sound discretion in denying JASE's motion for reconsideration. See Richardson, 598 F.3d at 740 ("A motion for reconsideration cannot be used `to relitigate old matters, raise argument or present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry of judgment.'" (quoting Michael Linet, Inc. v. Vill. of Wellington, 408 F.3d 757, 763 (11th Cir. 2005))).
The district court's denial of JASE's motion to vacate the order granting CONECEL's 28 U.S.C. § 1782 application and the denial of JASE's motion for reconsideration are
I concur in the judgment affirming the district court. I would affirm the district court, however, on the basis of CONECEL's second theory for why the evidence it seeks is for use in a "proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal" under § 1782. See Opinion at 993-94.
Section 1782(a) does not limit the provision of judicial assistance to "pending" or "imminent" adjudicative proceedings. Intel Corp., 542 U.S. at 259, 124 S.Ct. 2466 (rejecting the view that a proceeding must be "very likely to occur and very soon to occur"). The statute requires only that an adjudicative proceeding be "within reasonable contemplation." Id.
I conclude the record supports the district court's determination that CONECEL's potential litigation against Egas and Narváez was "within reasonable contemplation."
Moreover, the Intel decision also made clear that a district court, in the exercise of its sound discretion, may consider a number of the concerns that animated the decisions of the Second and Fifth Circuits, such as the claim that application of section 1782 to private arbitration is at odds with the limited scope of discovery and streamlined procedures that lead parties to elect to pursue arbitration in the first place. See Kazakhstan, 168 F.3d at 883; Nat'l Broad. Co., 165 F.3d at 190-91. Thus, for example, the Fifth Circuit reasoned that "arbitration's principal advantages may be destroyed if the parties succumb to fighting over burdensome discovery requests far from the place of arbitration." Kazakhstan, 168 F.3d at 883. This concern is real, but we recognize that the district court is in the best position to weigh the section 1782 applicant's asserted need for the evidence against the nature of the foreign proceeding and concerns of undue burden or intrusiveness — two factors that the Supreme Court expressly instructed district courts to consider in determining whether to grant a section 1782 application. Intel, 542 U.S. at 264-65, 124 S.Ct. 2466; accord id. at 264, 124 S.Ct. 2466 ("[T]he grounds Intel urged for categorical limitations on § 1782(a)'s scope may be relevant in determining whether a discovery order should be granted in a particular case."); In re Winning, 2010 WL 1796579, at *10 n. 5 ("[The party resisting discovery] correctly asserts that the broadened definition of `international tribunal' by the Supreme Court in Intel may result in additional discovery burdens that parties to private arbitration seek to avoid. However, because courts may modify discovery requests based upon the discretionary factors set forth in Intel, such burdens may be significantly curtailed by a court, and thus allow parties to still reap the benefits of private arbitration.").