Washington State Investment Board v. Odebrecht S.A.
- Paul Gardephe
- 1:17-cv-08118
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Washington State Investment Board v. Odebrecht S.A., Judge Moses granted a request for a conference about proposed issue preclusion.
Washington State Investment Board and the defendants, including Odebrecht S.A.; the order required the parties to prepare for a pre-motion conference but did not decide the proposed issue-preclusion motion.
What happened
Washington State Investment Board v. Odebrecht S.A. concerns the plaintiff’s planned motion to use factual findings from an earlier related action against the defendants.
The plaintiff asked the court to arrange a conference before filing that motion. The court scheduled the conference for November 6, 2023, and identified questions about the motion’s legal basis, the court’s authority to consider it, the schedule, and whether issue preclusion could apply.
Judge Barbara Moses granted the request only to the extent that the court would hold the pre-motion conference. She directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion listed as Docket 121.
The detailed version
- Washington State Investment Board v. Odebrecht S.A. · No. 1:17-cv-08118
- Paul Gardephe
- Oct. 17, 2023
Background
The court received letters from the parties about Washington State Investment Board’s contemplated motion to apply collateral estoppel, also called issue preclusion, to certain factual findings from an earlier related action.
Court’s Discussion
The court scheduled a pre-motion conference for November 6, 2023. It directed the parties to be prepared to discuss four issues:
- Whether the contemplated motion would be brought under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f) or another procedural mechanism.
- Whether the motion fell within the scope of the court’s reference.
- A proposed briefing schedule.
- Whether nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel could apply given the circumstances described in the order.
Those circumstances included that the factual findings in the earlier action were deemed established only for purposes of that action; the findings resulted from a discovery sanction; the opinion identified no comparable conduct in the present action; no final judgment had been entered in the earlier action; and the plaintiff sought to use issue preclusion for a purpose other than establishing that a debt could not be discharged in bankruptcy.
Disposition
The court granted the plaintiff’s request to the extent that it would conduct the pre-motion conference. The order did not decide whether the contemplated issue-preclusion motion would be permitted or succeed. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motion at Docket 121.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.