Price, In re, 83-2042

• Decision Date: 30 January 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-2042,83-2042
• Citation: 723 F.2d 1193
• Parties: In re the Petition of Billy F. PRICE and Henriette von Schirach, geb. Hoffmann. To Perpetuate the Testimony of Henriette von Schirach, geb. Hoffmann, et al. UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Billy F. PRICE, et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1193

723 F.2d 1193

In re the Petition of Billy F. PRICE and Henriette von

Schirach, geb. Hoffmann.

To Perpetuate the Testimony of Henriette von Schirach, geb.

Hoffmann, et al.

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Billy F. PRICE, et al., Appellees.

No. 83-2042.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Jan. 30, 1984.

James G. Hergen, Leonard Schaitman, Howard S. Scher, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Civ.Div., Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Johnson & Williams, Robert I. White, Larry A. Campagna, Houston, Tex., for appellees.

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

Before GEE, TATE and HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judges.

GEE, Circuit Judge:

The issue for decision is whether the district court erred when it granted a petition to perpetuate testimony pursuant to Rule 27, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. It is settled in our circuit that such orders are appealable and that the standard by which we review them is abuse of discretion. Shore v. Acands, Inc., 644 F.2d 386 (5th Cir.1981).

Appellee-Petitioner Price is an art collector who is compiling material for a book about the art of Adolf Hitler. His co-petitioner von Schirach is the daughter of Hitler's official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. At the close of World War II, Hoffmann owned two watercolors attributed to Hitler. When American forces entered Munich in 1945, the paintings were taken from Hoffmann's library under circumstances not revealed by the record. Hoffmann's daughter, who inherited Hoffmann's rights in these paintings when her father died in 1957, conveyed an interest in them to Price in 1982. The paintings are presently, it appears, in the hands of the United States Department of the Army.

In late 1982, the petitioners moved under Rule 27 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to perpetuate the testimony of nine aged German nationals. No action was or could have been filed against the United States at that time because the petitioners were still pursuing their administrative remedies. Their petition was granted and the German citizens were deposed in late January 1983. Between the granting of the petition and the taking of the depositions, one of the plaintiffs' administrative claims was denied. The government then filed a motion for reconsideration contending that the requirements of Rule 27(a) were not then met because, upon that denial, the plaintiffs could have brought their action. The motion was denied.

The United States now appeals, asserting that the district court erred in permitting the depositions to be taken. Chiefly it complains that authorization pursuant to Rule 27 was improper since the "matter" in which petitioners meant to use the depositions was not one "cognizable" in a court of the United States and since by the time the depositions were taken the action for which they were intended could already have been filed. ¹ At oral argument we were advised that the action in anticipation of which the depositions were taken had been filed.

In these circumstances, we see no reason to proceed with this appeal, which events have transmuted into a species of piecemeal appellate litigation whereby we are asked to pass in advance on aspects of the admissibility of evidence--evidence that may or may not be offered at the forthcoming trial and, if offered, may or may not be admitted. We would entertain no separate appeal from such an evidentiary ruling made in the course of a trial; we see no more occasion to do so in the circumstances presented.

None of the reasons that support appellate review of a Rule 27 order, favorable or unfavorable, before the deposition that it authorizes or declines to authorize has been taken and the action for which the deposition is intended has been filed continue to obtain after these events have occurred. Whatever expense and effort were to have been occasioned by the deposition and might have...