## Facts

- Plaintiffs sued Volkswagen of America and Volkswagen A.G. (VWAG) in a Texas products-liability action arising from injuries involving a 1970 Volkswagen.
- In discovery, plaintiffs sought VWAG’s current corporate telephone directory to identify potential witnesses related to alleged door-latch defects.
- The directory contained names, job titles, organizational positions, direct-dial work numbers for over 20,000 employees, and home telephone numbers for some managers.
- VWAG objected that Germany’s Federal Data Protection Act restricted dissemination of private information without consent and that production would violate German law.
- The trial court overruled the objection, declined to give effect to German privacy law, and ordered VWAG to produce the directory.
- VWAG sought mandamus relief to set aside the discovery order.

## Issues

1. Whether a Texas trial court may compel discovery of information located abroad and protected by foreign privacy law without balancing Texas discovery interests against the foreign sovereign’s interests.
2. Whether ordering production of VWAG’s corporate telephone directory while disregarding German law constituted an abuse of discretion warranting mandamus relief.

## Decision

- The Texas Supreme Court conditionally granted mandamus relief.
- The court held the trial court abused its discretion by failing to balance competing interests and by disregarding German privacy law entirely.
- Applying a foreign-relations comity balancing approach, the court concluded the directory should not be produced.
- The writ would issue only if the trial court did not vacate or refrain from enforcing its production order.

## Legal Principles

- A court with jurisdiction over a party may order production of relevant information located outside the United States, but must account for foreign legal restrictions on disclosure.
- When foreign law protects sought information, the court should balance domestic interests against the foreign sovereign’s interests using factors reflected in Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law § 442, including:
  - importance of the requested information to the litigation;
  - specificity of the request;
  - whether the information originated in the United States;
  - availability of alternative means to obtain the information; and
  - comparative impact on U.S. interests from noncompliance versus impact on foreign sovereign interests from compliance.
- Mandamus is appropriate when a discovery order reflects a clear abuse of discretion and there is no adequate remedy by appeal, including where compelled disclosure would cause irreversible harm.

## Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court required Texas trial courts to weigh foreign privacy laws and sovereign interests against Texas discovery needs in cross-border discovery disputes, and it barred production of an overbroad corporate telephone directory where alternative, narrower discovery tools were available and compliance would contravene German data-protection law.


Volkswagen, A.G. v. Valdez, 909 S.W.2d 900 (Tex. 1995)