U.S. Discovery and Foreign Blocking Statutes
11 Pages Posted: 16 Feb 2016
Date Written: February 15, 2016
Abstract
What is the reality between U.S. discovery and the foreign blocking statutes that impede it in France and other civil law states? How should we understand their interface at a time when companies are multinational in composition as well as in their areas of commerce? U.S. courts grapple with the challenge of understanding why they should adhere to strictures that seem to compromise constitutional or quasi-constitutional rights of American plaintiffs, while French and German lawyers and judges struggle with the challenges U.S. discovery poses to values of privacy and fair trial procedure in their legal systems. This article seeks to address these issues.
Keywords: foreign blocking statutes; U.S. discovery; transnational litigation; Hague Convention on Evidence; international arbitration
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