“SCOTUS Finally Agrees to Address Discovery for Use in Foreign Arbitration”

International arbitration practitioners who have been monitoring the split among the United States federal circuits as to the applicability of 28 U.S.C. § 1782 to permit discovery may be interested to know that the Supreme Court, having granted certiorari in a Seventh Circuit case, will decide the issue. As summarized in this National Law Review article authored by Shin Hahn and Neil Popovic of Sheppard Mullin, “[t]he Supreme Court’s decision should resolve the current circuit split on the question of whether Section 1782 can be used for private international arbitration, which has been an ongoing topic of interest among international arbitration practitioners and scholars.” The Court’s decision either “will open up U.S.-style discovery, which has typically been perceived to be expansive and broader than what is permitted in international arbitration, to litigants in private foreign arbitration proceedings,” or will foreclose litigants from “tak[ing] advantage of Section 1782 to assist them with gathering evidence and testimony from parties and witnesses located in the U.S.”