CPR Asks Supreme Court to Consider Another Foreign Tribunal Evidence Case

The International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case on the extent of a law allowing U.S. federal courts to grant requests from foreign tribunals for discovery on U.S. persons as defined under the statute.

The question in AlixPartners LLP, et al. v. The Fund for Protection of Investors’ Rights in Foreign States, No. 21-518, is whether the law on international tribunals applies to arbitration panel requests.

It’s the second Supreme Court amicus request by CPR in 2021.

CPR didn’t take a position in its Monday amicus filing, but instead asked the Court to hear the matter and clear up a federal circuit split over whether overseas arbitration tribunals may obtain requests for discovery under the law as, say, a foreign court can do.

The reach of 28 U.S.C § 1728 has become a hot topic in federal appellate courts over the past two years. It was thought to be nearing a conclusion when the nation’s top Court granted cert on the issue in Servotronics Inc. v. Rolls-Royce PLC, et al., No. 20-794.

But while the parties waited for the October Court argument date, they also proceeded in arbitration. After a July award by a London tribunal, the Court granted the parties’ request to dismiss the case in September, and it was removed from the docket. For more on Servotronics’ details and history, see Bryanna Rainwater, “Case Dismissed: Supreme Court Lightens Its Arbitration Load as Servotronics Is Removed from 2021-22 Docket,” CPR Speaks (Sept. 8) (available here).

CPR last January also had filed an amicus brief, linked at the CPR Speaks post, urging the Court to accept Servotronics. That brief also can be found at the Court’s docket page here.

CPR’s motion for leave to file the AlixPartners amicus brief, as well as the brief itself, is posted on the Supreme Court’s docket page for the case, linked above, and can be accessed directly here. The matter is expected to be considered by the Court at a conference before year end.

Attorneys at Cincinnati’s Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP prepared and filed the brief on CPR’s behalf. The counsel of record on the filing is John B. Pinney, and the attorneys on the brief are Roula Allouch and John C. Greiner.

For coverage of CPR’s Alixpartners amicus filing argument, see Victoria McKenzie, “Arbitration Group Urges High Court To Define ‘Tribunal,’” Law360 (Nov. 9, 2021) (available here).

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