## Facts

- Laker Airways Ltd., a British airline, alleged that major U.S. and foreign airlines conspired to eliminate Laker’s low-fare transatlantic service through predatory pricing and coordinated refusals to deal.
- Laker alleged that Sabena and KLM, among others, pressured Laker’s lenders to withhold promised refinancing, depriving Laker of needed capital and forcing liquidation.
- Laker filed a private antitrust action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against multiple airlines, including Sabena and KLM, based on alleged conduct with substantial effects in U.S. markets.
- After the U.S. suit was filed, certain foreign airline defendants pursued proceedings in the United Kingdom seeking to enjoin Laker from continuing the U.S. litigation.
- U.K. courts issued injunctions requiring steps to dismiss portions of the U.S. action, and U.K. governmental action under the Protection of Trading Interests Act sought to prevent compliance with U.S. court orders in connection with the antitrust litigation.
- Laker sought a U.S. antisuit injunction to prevent Sabena, KLM, and other remaining defendants from participating in foreign proceedings intended to terminate or impair the U.S. antitrust case.

## Issues

1. Whether a federal district court may enjoin parties before it from pursuing foreign proceedings aimed at terminating or frustrating the U.S. court’s adjudication of a pending antitrust action.
2. Whether issuing such an antisuit injunction improperly violates international comity by interfering with another nation’s courts and asserted regulatory interests.
3. How a U.S. court should respond when the United States and a foreign sovereign both have plausible prescriptive jurisdiction over the relevant conduct.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed the district court’s preliminary antisuit injunction.
- The court held the district court acted within its discretion to protect its adjudicatory authority from foreign proceedings designed to nullify the U.S. litigation.
- The court concluded the injunction did not impermissibly offend international comity because it restrained parties subject to U.S. jurisdiction, not the foreign courts, and was tailored to prevent interference with the U.S. action.

## Legal Principles

- A federal court may issue an antisuit injunction in exceptional circumstances to protect its jurisdiction where foreign proceedings are initiated to terminate or paralyze the domestic adjudication rather than to litigate the merits in parallel.
- International comity is a prudential doctrine of restraint, not a rule requiring a U.S. court to surrender properly invoked jurisdiction when foreign proceedings are used to frustrate enforcement of U.S. law.
- Overlapping bases of prescriptive jurisdiction (including territorial “effects” jurisdiction and nationality-based jurisdiction) can coexist; the presence of concurrent jurisdiction does not by itself require domestic abstention.
- An antisuit injunction is more defensible when it is “defensive” (preserving the domestic court’s ability to proceed) and is directed at litigants within the domestic court’s power rather than purporting to control the foreign tribunal.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit held that, given substantial U.S. interests in adjudicating alleged anticompetitive conduct with U.S. market effects and the targeted effort to halt the U.S. suit through foreign antisuit litigation, the district court properly issued a preliminary injunction restraining Sabena and KLM from pursuing foreign proceedings that would undermine the U.S. antitrust case.


Laker Airways Ltd. v. Sabena, Belgian World Airlines, 731 F.2d 909 (D.C. Cir. 1984)