Martinez v. E.I. Dupont De Nemours & Co.

• Decision Date: 04 March 2014
• Docket Number: No. 669,2012.,669
• Citation: 86 A.3d 1102
• Parties: Maria Elena MARTINEZ, Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Santos Roque Rocha, deceased, Plaintiff Below, Appellant, v. E.I. DuPONT DE NEMOURS AND COMPANY, INC., Defendant Below, Appellee.
• Court: Supreme Court of Delaware

86 A.3d 1102

Maria Elena MARTINEZ, Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of Santos Roque Rocha, deceased, Plaintiff Below, Appellant,

v.E.I. DuPONT DE NEMOURS AND COMPANY, INC., Defendant Below, Appellee.

No. 669, 2012.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Submitted: Nov. 6, 2013.

Decided: Feb. 20, 2014.

Dissent Revised: March 4, 2014.

Court Below—Superior Court of the State of Delaware, in and for New Castle County, C.A. No. N10C–04–209–ASB.

Upon appeal from the Superior Court. AFFIRMED.

Thomas C. Crumplar, Esquire (argued) and Jordan J. Perry, Esquire, Jacobs & Crumplar, P.A., Wilmington, Delaware, for appellant Maria Elena Martinez.

John C. Phillips, Jr., Esquire (argued) and David A. Bilson, Esquire, Phillips, Goldman & Spence, P.A., Wilmington, Delaware, for appellee, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company.

Before HOLLAND, BERGER and JACOBS, Justices, STRINE, Chancellor ¹ and NOBLE, Vice Chancellor.²

HOLLAND, Justice, for the majority:

This case is one of approximately thirty-two cases filed against the defendant-appellee, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Inc. (“DuPont”), by Argentine nationals who claim that they were exposed to asbestos while working in textile plants located in Berazategui, Argentina and Mercedes, Argentina. At the time of the alleged exposures, which began in the early 1960's, the plants were owned by DuPont Argentina Sociedad Anomina (“DASA”). DASA, now known as DASRL, has its principal place of business in Argentina, and is a great-great grand-subsidiary of DuPont.

The plaintiff-appellant, Maria Elena Martinez (“Martinez”), is the wife of now deceased Argentine textile plant worker Santos Roque Rocha (“Rocha”). Her complaint alleges that her husband suffered injuries while employed by DASRL. The Superior Court dismissed Martinez's complaint pursuant to Superior Court Civil Rules 8 and 9 for inadequate pleading, for failure to state a claim under Superior Court Civil Rule 12(b)(6), for failure to join a necessary party under Superior Court Civil Rule 19, and on forum non conveniens grounds.

In this direct appeal, Martinez challenges each of the Superior Court's independent and alternate grounds for dismissal. We have concluded that the Superior Court properly exercised its discretion in dismissing the Complaint on the basis of forum non conveniens. Therefore, we do not reach or address the other issues.

A forum non conveniens motion is addressed to the trial court's sound discretion.³ On review, this Court determines “whether the findings and conclusions of the Superior Court are supported by the record and are the product of an orderly and logical [reasoning] process. If they are, whether or not reasonable people could differ on the conclusions to be drawn from the record, this Court must affirm....” ⁴

Delaware's jurisprudence in forum non conveniens cases is well established. Where there is no issue of prior pendency of the same action in another jurisdiction, our analysis is guided by what are known as the “Cryo–Maid factors”: ⁵

(1) the relative ease of access to proof;

(2) the availability of compulsory process for witnesses;

(3) the possibility of the view of the premises;

(4) whether the controversy is dependent upon the application of Delaware law which the courts of this State more properly should decide than those of another jurisdiction;

(5) the pendency or nonpendency of a similar action or actions in another jurisdiction; and

(6) all other practical problems that would make the trial of the case easy, expeditious and inexpensive.⁶

In the Chrysler First Bus. Credit Corp. v. 1500 Locust Ltd. Partnership case,⁷ this Court explained that:

A plaintiff's choice of forum should not be defeated except in the rare case where the defendant establishes, through the Cryo–Maid factors, overwhelming hardship and inconvenience. It is not enough that all of the Cryo–Maid factors may favor defendant. The trial court must consider the weight of those factors in the particular case and determine whether any or all of them truly cause both inconvenience and hardship.

Accordingly, to prevail under the forum non conveniens doctrine, a defendant must meet the high burden of showing that the traditional forum non conveniens factors weigh so heavily that the defendant will face “overwhelming hardship” if the lawsuit proceeds in Delaware.⁸ The overwhelming hardship requirement involves a discretionary determination that has challenged this State's trial courts for many years in their efforts to make consistent dispositions of forum non conveniens motions to dismiss. Because the determination of such motions depends on a proper application of the “overwhelming hardship”standard, we take this opportunity to review its origins and meaning.

This Court has held that a defendant can satisfy the overwhelming hardship standard by convincing the trial court that the case before it “is one of those rare cases where the drastic relief of dismissal is warranted based on a strong showing that the burden of litigating in this forum is so severe as to result in manifest hardship....” ⁹ Although a motion to dismiss on forum non conveniens grounds is addressed to the sound discretion of the trial judge, ¹⁰ on several occasions this Court has reversed a trial court determination that the overwhelming hardship standard was satisfied.¹¹ The experience in those cases have led some trial judges to conclude that term “overwhelming hardship” suggests an insurmountable burden for defendants. ¹² That perception, although understandable, is not accurate.

We hold, as did the Court of Chancery in IM2 Merchandising & Manufacturing, Inc. v. Tirex Corp.,¹³ and as the Superior Court determined in this case, that “a more restrained meaning is at the essence of the [overwhelming hardship] standard.” ¹⁴ As we explained in Ison v. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., the overwhelming hardship standard is not intended to be preclusive. Rather, it is intended as a stringent standard that holds defendants who seek to deprive a plaintiff of her chosen forum to an appropriately high burden.¹⁵

The evolution of the adjective “overwhelming” in this context is consistent with the distinction between preclusive and stringent. As we acknowledged in Ison, the overwhelming hardship standard arose out of this Court's 1965 decision in Kolber v. Holyoke Shares, Inc.¹⁶ There, we summarized the proper application of the forum non conveniens dismissal standard as follows: “The dismissal of an action on the basis of the [ forum non conveniens ] doctrine, and the ultimate defeat of the plaintiff's choice of forum, may occur only in the rare case in which the combination and weight of the factors to be considered balance overwhelmingly in favor of the defendant.” ¹⁷ Similarly, in Williams Gas Supply Co. v. Apache Corp.,¹⁸ this Court affirmed a dismissal of a first-filed Delaware action on forum non conveniens grounds. We stated that:

[T]he Superior Court placed the burden upon [the defendant] to prove inconvenience and hardship by demonstrating that the combination and weight of the appropriate factors in a traditional forum non conveniens analysis weighed overwhelmingly in favor of its motion to dismiss or stay the plaintiff's first filed Delaware action the deference to which a valid first filed action is entitled.¹⁹

In Ison, this Court also cited several other cases, including the “well-reasoned” ²⁰ opinion of the Connecticut Supreme Court in Picketts v. International Playtex, Inc.²¹Picketts held that the plaintiff's “choice of forum ... should be respected unless equity weighs strongly in favor of the defendant.” ²² In Ison, we stated that the description of the defendant's burden in Picketts was “consistent with the ‘overwhelming hardship’ language of the Delaware jurisprudence.” ²³ We also noted that our earlier decision in Parvin v. Kaufmann²⁴ had relied on the United States Supreme Court's decision in Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert,²⁵ which required that a plaintiff's choice of forum be respected “unless the balance is strongly in favor of the defendant....” ²⁶

To summarize, although the overwhelming hardship standard is stringent, it is not preclusive. Accordingly, in deciding forum non conveniens motions to dismiss, Delaware trial judges must decide whether the defendants have shown that the forum non conveniens factors weigh so overwhelmingly in their favor that dismissal of the Delaware litigation is required to avoid undue hardship and inconvenience to them.

The Superior Court concluded that the unique circumstances presented by this foreign asbestos case created the “overwhelming hardship” required for a forum non conveniens dismissal under Delaware law.²⁷ We agree with that conclusion.

Although Martinez challenges the Superior Court's forum non conveniens determination, she has not demonstrated that the dismissal constituted an abuse of discretion. The Superior Court specifically addressed this Court's forum non conveniens jurisprudence, acknowledging the high burden borne by a defendant seeking dismissal on that basis. As the record reflects, the Superior Court understood and conducted a detailed analysis of each of the Cryo–Maid factors, focusing on the multiple, practical problems and costs that litigating these Argentine occupational injury cases in Delaware would impose on DuPont and on the courts of Delaware.

More specifically, the Superior Court acted fully within its discretion under our precedent by giving weight to the novelty and importance of the legal issues presented in this case—especially since the governing law is set forth in Spanish, not English. That court permissibly concluded that those issues were more appropriately determined by the courts of the only sovereign whose law is at stake—Argentina—just as this Court has recognized that novel or important issues of Delaware law are best determined by Delaware courts. ²⁸ That is especially so because the issue of when parent corporations can be held liable...