Ford v. Brown

• Decision Date: 30 January 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-14141.,01-14141.
• Citation: 319 F.3d 1302
• Parties: Michael E.A. FORD, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert Winston BROWN, Exxon Corporation, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

319 F.3d 1302

Michael E.A. FORD, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Robert Winston BROWN, Exxon Corporation, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 01-14141.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

January 30, 2003.

William J. Boyce, D. Dudley Oldham, Anne M. Rodgers, Darryl Wade Anderson, Fulbright & Jaworski, L.L.P., Houston, TX, Marty Steinberg, Walfrido J. Martinez, Hunton & Williams, Mark Paul Schnapp, Greenberg & Traurig, Miami, FL, for Defendants-Appellants.

Stuart M. Speiser, Scottsdale, AZ, Joel S. Perwin, Podhurst, Orseck, Josefsberg, Eaton, Meadow, Olin & Perwin, P.A., Miami, FL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before TJOFLAT, COX and BRIGHT^*, Circuit Judges.

TJOFLAT, Circuit Judge:

The Castle Peak "B" Power Station,¹ located in Hong Kong, exploded on August 28, 1992, killing two people and injuring nineteen others. The event spawned the following proceedings: (1) a Coroner's Inquest in Hong Kong; (2) a Hong Kong Bar Association disciplinary proceeding against Michael Ford ("Plaintiff"); (3) a Hong Kong civil suit against Ford; (4) a law suit in Texas instigated by Plaintiff against Exxon Corp. and Robert Brown ("Defendants"); and (5) this litigation — a law suit filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida by Plaintiff against Defendants.

After Plaintiff brought this action, Defendants moved to dismiss it on doctrines of comity and forum non conveniens, and for failure to state a claim for relief. The district court denied their motion, and certified its ruling for interlocutory appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). We granted Defendants application for permission to take the appeal, and now reverse, concluding that the district court abused its discretion in failing to dismiss the case pursuant to the forum non conveniens doctrine.² Because this conclusion disposes of the case, we decline to reach the other issues pressed by Defendants.³

I.

Soon after the power station exploded, an Inquest into the cause of the accident was convened by the Hong Kong Coroner.⁴ CLP and CAPCO retained the London firm of Holman, Fenwick & Willan ("HFW").⁵ One of HFW's solicitors, Guy Hardaker, retained Plaintiff as the barrister for the Castle Peak Inquest.⁶ In the course of his work on the Castle Peak Inquest, Plaintiff became acquainted with Defendant Robert Brown, who worked as in-house legal counsel to EEL in Hong Kong.⁷ (Plaintiff alleges that although Brown purported to serve at the behest of EEL, Brown was in fact an agent of Defendant Exxon Corp.)

While Plaintiff was preparing for the Inquest, he became suspicious that Exxon Corp. and Brown (both in the United States), in conjunction with other parties working on behalf of CLP and CAPCO were orchestrating a cover-up designed to hide the cause of the explosion from the Coroner. The motive for this deception, Plaintiff contends, was to prevent charges of gross negligence and manslaughter against those responsible for the accident. Plaintiff claims, for example, that CLP created a so-called "Red Report," a false report which listed the cause of the explosion as "water entrapment," whereas, in reality, the cause of the explosion was "the jamming of the inner cup of the gas holder, which had not been inspected internally since its installation in 1995."⁸ At this point, Plaintiff claims that he contacted the Hong Kong Bar Association for guidance about how to proceed with his representation in the face of an ethical dilemma, and that the Bar Association instructed him to withdraw from the case.⁹ Before he could withdraw from his representation of CLP and CAPCO, Plaintiff asserts that he was fired by Hardaker (at the direction of Exxon and Brown) in a public fashion, thereby embarrassing him and causing tremendous financial harm and emotional grief. Plaintiff contends that this conduct, combined with a series of public statements to the Hong Kong press and Hong Kong legal community,¹⁰ constitutes several actionable torts (discussed infra).

Defendants have a different story. First, they contend that they had nothing to do with the events that transpired in Hong Kong. They had no influence over the hiring or firing of Plaintiff, nor were they part of the legal team comprised of CLP and CAPCO lawyers. Second, they argue that Plaintiff's "cover-up" theory is a lie. Rather, Plaintiff was not sufficiently prepared to represent CLP and CAPCO at the Inquest, and he invented the cover-up story in order to cease his representation without harm to his reputation. Defendants also point to another reason for firing Plaintiff: he allegedly lied about being instructed by the Hong Kong Bar Association to cease his participation in the Inquest. Defendants point to various affidavits from officials with the Hong Kong Bar Association that the Association never instructed Plaintiff to withdraw from his representation of CLP and CAPCO.

After he was fired, Plaintiff retained several documents relating to his representation of CLP and CAPCO. Plaintiff refused to hand over the documents, and CLP and CAPCO filed suit, alleging conversion and breach of Plaintiff's duty of attorney-client confidentiality. CLP and CAPCO obtained a preliminary injunction from the Supreme Court of Hong Kong.¹¹ This injunction enjoined Plaintiff from releasing to third parties any of the documents or information that Plaintiff obtained in the course of his representation of CLP and CAPCO in the Castle Peak Inquest. The litigation continued in Hong Kong (while the Texas case, discussed infra, was pending), and the Supreme Court of Hong Kong eventually awarded damages to CLP and CAPCO and made the injunction permanent.¹² In response to Plaintiff's cover-up theory, the court found that no such conspiracy existed and that Plaintiff's actions were "disgraceful." On appeal, the Hong Kong Court of Appeal similarly noted that Plaintiff's retention of the documents was not "legally justified," and that the allegations of a conspiracy were "unfounded in terms of any real evidence."

While under the preliminary injunction,¹³ Plaintiff filed suit in Texas state court using the documents and information retained from his representation of CLP and CAPCO during the Coroner's Inquest. Plaintiff eventually dismissed his case in Texas and refiled it in Florida.¹⁴ In 1994 — after Plaintiff filed suit in Texas but prior to the Florida litigation — the Supreme Court of Hong Kong entered the final judgment against Plaintiff (discussed supra). In a similar vein, the Hong Kong Bar Association instituted disciplinary proceedings against Plaintiff. The Bar Association ultimately suspended Plaintiff from practicing law as a barrister in Hong Kong for four years.¹⁵

As a result of his public termination from the Castle Peak investigation and a host of public statements, Plaintiff claims that his reputation as a barrister in Hong Kong was destroyed. He brought suit pursuant to the district court's diversity jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, asserting the following torts: intentional interference with business relations, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and defamation.¹⁶ Defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that the doctrine of forum non conveniens dictates that the case be heard in Hong Kong or England rather than Florida. Plaintiff, on the other hand, argued that Defendants should be sanctioned for allegedly deceiving the district court.¹⁷ The district court denied both motions, declining to sanction Defendants while simultaneously refusing to dismiss the case.

II.

A.

The doctrine of forum non conveniens "authorizes a trial court to decline to exercise its jurisdiction, even though the court has venue, where it appears that the convenience of the parties and the court, and the interests of justice indicate that the action should be tried in another forum." Sibaja v. Dow Chem. Co., 757 F.2d 1215, 1218 (11th Cir.1985). Justice Jackson's articulation of the doctrine describes the balancing test as follows:

An interest to be considered, and the one likely to be most pressed, is the private interest of the litigant. Important considerations are the relative ease of access to sources of proof; availability of compulsory process for attendance of unwilling, and the cost of obtaining attendance of willing, witnesses; possibility of view of the premises, if view would be appropriate to the action; and all other practical problems that make trial of a case easy, expeditious and inexpensive. There may also be questions as to the enforceability of a judgment if one is obtained. The court will weigh relative advantages and obstacles to fair trial. It is often said that the plaintiff may not, by choice of an inconvenient forum, "vex," "harass," or "oppress" the defendant by inflicting upon him expense or trouble not necessary to his own right to pursue his remedy. But unless the balance is strongly in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff's choice of forum should rarely be disturbed.

Factors of public interest also have a place in applying the doctrine. Administrative difficulties follow for courts when litigation is piled up in congested centers instead of being handled at its origin. Jury duty is a burden that ought not to be imposed upon the people of a community which has no relation to the litigation. In cases which touch the affairs of many persons, there is reason for holding the trial in their view and reach rather than in remote parts of the country where they can learn of it by report only. There is a local interest in having localized controversies decided at home. There is an appropriateness, too, in having the trial of a diversity case in a forum that is at home with the state law that must govern the case, rather than having a court in some other forum untangle problems in conflict of laws, and in law foreign to itself.

Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 508-09, 67 S.Ct. 839, 843, 91 L.Ed. 1055 (1947).

...