## Facts

- Westinghouse Electric Corp. and the Tennessee Valley Authority brought antitrust actions alleging an international conspiracy among uranium producers to restrain trade and fix prices.
- The cases were coordinated in multidistrict litigation in the Northern District of Illinois.
- During discovery, plaintiffs sought production of uranium-marketing documents (e.g., contracts and communications) maintained in foreign offices of certain defendants.
- Several foreign defendants refused production, asserting that Canadian, Australian, and South African nondisclosure (“blocking”) statutes prohibited disclosure for use in U.S. proceedings and threatened criminal penalties for compliance.
- Plaintiffs sought an order compelling production under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(a).
- The defendants argued the court should deny or limit discovery based on international comity and the foreign sovereigns’ expressed policies of nondisclosure.

## Issues

1. Whether a federal court may order parties to produce documents located abroad if the documents are within the parties’ possession, custody, or control.
2. Whether foreign blocking statutes bar compelled production, or instead require a comity-based balancing of competing national interests.
3. How foreign nondisclosure laws should affect both the decision to compel discovery and any later sanctions for noncompliance.

## Decision

- The court largely granted the Rule 37(a) motions to compel.
- The court held it could require production of documents within a party’s possession, custody, or control even when located outside the United States.
- The court rejected treating foreign blocking statutes as an absolute defense and instead weighed U.S. and foreign interests under principles of international comity.
- The court found the U.S. interest in effective antitrust enforcement and access to central marketing and pricing evidence outweighed the foreign nondisclosure interests, particularly where the blocking measures were aimed at impeding this litigation.
- The court imposed limitations and protective accommodations for certain requests and indicated it could revisit particular categories if concrete evidence of imminent foreign prosecution emerged.
- The court stated foreign law was relevant both to whether compulsion should issue and to the assessment of sanctions, including consideration of good-faith efforts to seek foreign governmental permissions.

## Legal Principles

- Discovery under the Federal Rules may be compelled based on a party’s “possession, custody, or control,” not the physical location of documents.
- Foreign blocking or secrecy statutes do not automatically preclude compelled discovery in U.S. litigation.
- When foreign law prohibits disclosure, courts should apply a comity-based balancing that commonly considers:
  - the importance of the materials to the litigation,
  - the specificity of the requests,
  - the availability of alternative means to obtain the information,
  - the hardship and sanction risk to the producing party,
  - the producing party’s good faith, and
  - the respective national interests at stake.
- Foreign nondisclosure laws may bear on both the scope of any production order and the appropriateness and severity of sanctions for noncompliance.

## Conclusion

The court compelled substantial foreign document production in a uranium antitrust MDL, holding that overseas location and foreign blocking statutes did not bar discovery where defendants controlled the documents; instead, the court applied international comity balancing and granted relief with targeted protective accommodations.


In re Uranium Antitrust Litig., 480 F. Supp. 1138 (N.D. Ill. 1979)