ZF Auto. US, Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd.

ZF Auto. US, Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd.

Opinion

Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court.

] Congress has long allowed federal courts to assist foreign or international adjudicative bodies in evidence gathering. The current statute, 28 U. S. C. §1782, permits district courts to order testimony or the production of evidence “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal.” These consolidated cases require us to decide whether private adjudicatory bodies count as “foreign or international tribunals.” They do not. The statute reaches only governmental or intergovernmental adjudicative bodies, and neither of the arbitral panels involved in these cases fits [*9]  that bill.

Both cases before us involve a party seeking discovery in the United States for use in arbitration proceedings abroad. In both, the party seeking discovery invoked §1782, which permits a district court to order the production of certain evidence “for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal.” And in both, the party resisting discovery argued that the arbitral panel at issue did not qualify as a “foreign or international tribunal” under the statute.

But while these cases present the same threshold legal question, their factual contexts differ. We discuss each in turn.

The first case involves an allegation of fraud in a business deal gone sour. ZF Automotive US, Inc., a Michigan-based automotive parts manufacturer and subsidiary of a German corporation, sold two business units to Luxshare, Ltd., a Hong Kong-based company, for almost a billion dollars. Luxshare claims that after the deal was done, it discovered that ZF had concealed information about the business units. As a result, Luxshare says, it overpaid by hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the contract governing the sale, the parties had agreed that all disputes would be “exclusively and finally settled by [*10]  three (3) arbitrators in accordance with the Arbitration Rules of the German Institution of Arbitration e.V. (DIS).” App. in No. 21-401, p. 93. DIS is a private dispute-resolution organization based in Berlin. The agreement, which is governed by German law, provides that arbitration take place in Munich and that the arbitration panel be formed by Luxshare and ZF each choosing one arbitrator and those two arbitrators choosing a third.

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