Insights | Kobre & Kim — Disputes and Investigations

U.S. litigators will be familiar with the powers of U.S. courts to gather discovery, including through letters rogatory and Section 1782 applications.
Less well known are powerful non-U.S. discovery tools that can provide the ever-growing need for information from multiple jurisdictions.
One such example, the Norwich Pharmacal order, can offer litigants access to third-party information in key English common law jurisdictions around the world.

Russian individuals and companies with legitimate global interests still need to litigate their disputes in overseas jurisdictions.
Despite the current state of relations between the United States and Russia, U.S. courts are still giving Russian litigants a fair hearing.
We outline recent examples of successes that demonstrate how Russian litigants can still access powerful U.S. legal tools.

Victims of large-scale and sophisticated fraud in Brazil may struggle to recover their assets by only using tools available in the domestic legal system.
However, a growing interest in fighting cross-border crime by U.S. authorities, together with the power of tools in the U.S., provide victims with a potentially better path to success.
Our cross-border team explains what strategies victims can deploy to achieve results.

Companies often believe that the only remedy for anti-competitive behavior comes from government intervention.
However, as a recent U.S. appeals court decision illustrates, private parties can obtain relief themselves, even against “consummated” mergers approved by government regulators.
This creative strategy is just one of many that companies can deploy by themselves when facing competitive challenges.

Section 1782 discovery in the United States is a powerful tool to access information and gain an edge in foreign proceedings.
However, the power of this tool and the ease in which it is granted invites parties to use it in service of goals completely unrelated to ongoing proceedings, such as a negative PR campaign.
Defeating a 1782 application is not easy, but there are counterarguments and cross-border tools available to fight back and turn the tables on an unscrupulous adversary.

Compared with UK discovery, with its limited scope and high costs, U.S. discovery can be a much more powerful and widely usable tool of enforcement.
U.S. Discovery, unlike UK discovery, is not limited to documents contained within its national borders.
Furthermore, documents discovered through U.S. discovery can often be used for purposes beyond those specifically identified in the original discovery application.

For international creditors, monetizing claims against debtors located in the People’s Republic of China has proven difficult.
The first challenge is finding where the assets are, specifically via offshore discovery.
Time is of the essence, and “freezing” the money is next.