## Facts

- Mexican citizens sued Ford and others in federal court in Indiana over a fatal accident in Mexico allegedly involving defective tires installed on Ford vehicles sold in Latin America.
- The Mexican cases were consolidated for pretrial proceedings in multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of Indiana.
- In a separate multidistrict litigation, Israeli citizens sued manufacturers of blood products in federal court in Illinois, alleging HIV infection from contaminated products used in Israel.
- The blood-products litigation was pending in the Northern District of Illinois.
- In both matters, the district courts dismissed on forum non conveniens grounds in favor of litigation in the countries where the injuries occurred.
- Prior Seventh Circuit decisions had affirmed similar forum non conveniens dismissals involving the same MDLs and comparable foreign-injury fact patterns.

## Issues

1. Whether the district courts abused their discretion by dismissing the actions on forum non conveniens grounds in favor of Mexico and Israel.
2. Whether appellants’ counsel violated professional obligations by failing to cite and address directly relevant, potentially dispositive Seventh Circuit precedent.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed both district court judgments.
- The court held the district judges acted within their discretion in concluding Mexico and Israel were the more appropriate forums.
- The court criticized appellants’ briefing for omitting and failing meaningfully to address controlling adverse precedent, characterizing the tactic as professionally improper.
- The court treated the continued failure to confront the key prior decision in the tire case as an implicit concession that it controlled.

## Legal Principles

- Forum non conveniens determinations are reviewed for abuse of discretion; where foreign plaintiffs seek a U.S. forum for injuries occurring abroad and an adequate foreign forum exists with stronger local connections, dismissal in favor of the foreign forum is ordinarily within the district court’s discretion.
- In assessing forum non conveniens in recurring MDL settings, materially similar prior circuit decisions strongly support affirmance when the later case presents the same core foreign parties, foreign injury, and foreign evidence concerns.
- Appellate counsel must disclose and address controlling or materially adverse authority from the same court, and must distinguish it or argue for its reconsideration; ignoring such authority, including in a reply brief after the opposing party raises it, is improper advocacy.

## Conclusion

The court upheld forum non conveniens dismissals sending Mexican and Israeli plaintiffs to their home-country courts for injuries occurring there, and used the consolidated appeals to admonish counsel that failing to cite and grapple with controlling adverse precedent is unacceptable and may be treated as a concession that the precedent governs.


Gonzalez-Servin v. Ford Motor Co., 662 F.3d 931 (7th Cir. 2011)