Citgo Petroleum Corporation v. Ascot Underwriting Limited
Citgo Petroleum Corporation v. Ascot Underwriting Limited, for and on behalf of Lloyd's Syndicate 1414
- Gregory Woods
- 1:21-cv-00389
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Citgo Petroleum v. Starstone, Judge Woods partly granted and partly denied Citgo’s request to judicially notice facts from government reports.
Citgo Petroleum Corporation and the defendants in the insurance action were affected by which proposed facts could be accepted through judicial notice.
What happened
In Citgo Petroleum Corporation v. Starstone Insurance SE, et al., Citgo asked the court to accept certain facts from reports by the U.S. State Department, Congressional Research Service, and United Nations without requiring proof of those facts at trial. The defendants challenged the reports’ reliability and the relevance of the proposed facts.
The court explained that judicial notice is allowed only for facts that are not reasonably disputable and can be accurately determined from reliable sources. It rejected the defendants’ relevance objection, but ruled that some proposed statements were opinions, contested matters, or allegations rather than established facts. The court therefore granted some requests, partly granted and partly denied others, and denied two requests.
In the order, Judge Gregory H. Woods granted judicial notice for Facts 1, 10, and 14; granted it in part and denied it in part for Facts 6, 9, and 15; and denied it for Facts 18 and 19. The clerk was directed to terminate the motion.
The detailed version
- Citgo Petroleum Corporation v. Ascot Underwriting Limited · No. 1:21-cv-00389
- Gregory Woods
- Nov. 10, 2023
Background
Citgo Petroleum Corporation filed a motion asking the court to take judicial notice of facts contained in reports issued by the U.S. State Department, the Congressional Research Service, and the United Nations. Judicial notice is a rule allowing a court to accept a fact without requiring the usual proof when the fact is not reasonably disputable and can be accurately determined from a source whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.
The defendants argued that the reports were unreliable and that the proposed facts were not relevant. The court rejected the relevance objection, concluding that events concerning whether an insurrection occurred that could have caused the loss of Citgo’s cargo were relevant to causation.
Legal standard
The court emphasized that Rule 201 concerns judicial notice of facts, not entire documents. A fact must meet a high degree of indisputability. Statements closer to opinion than fact, disputed assertions, and allegations without factual findings generally cannot be judicially noticed.
Rulings on the proposed facts
- Fact No. 1: Judicial notice was granted for the revised fact beginning “On January 10, 2019, . . . .” - Fact No. 6: Judicial notice was granted in part and denied in part. The court granted notice for the first sentence concerning large-scale street protests but denied notice for the second sentence because “excessive force” was an opinionated and contested phrase. - Fact No. 9: Judicial notice was granted in part and denied in part. The court accepted a revised statement that the Venezuelan government organized snap presidential elections on May 20, 2018, that Nicolás Maduro was reelected through that process, and that much of the opposition boycotted it. The court did not take notice of the statement that the international community condemned the elections because that issue was not probative of relevant facts in the case. - Fact No. 10: Judicial notice was granted for the proposed fact concerning Juan Guaidó’s invocation of Article 233. - Fact No. 14: Judicial notice was granted for the proposed fact that throughout 2019 Maduro regularly targeted the National Assembly. - Fact No. 15: Judicial notice was granted in part, subject to revisions clarifying the time period and identifying Juan Guaidó and his supporters as the people seeking to bring emergency supplies into Venezuela. The court also excluded the final sentence concerning an alleged close-range shooting because the source did not clearly establish that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights witnesses were reporting their own observations. - Fact No. 18: Judicial notice was denied for the proposed fact concerning Guaidó’s entrance into the Federal Legislative Palace. The phrases “forcibly barred” and “tainted by corruption allegations” were opinionated, and the court would not take notice of statements about allegations without factual findings. - Fact No. 19: Judicial notice was denied for the proposed fact concerning what the State Department reported in 2020. The phrase “credible allegations” did not establish factual findings.
Disposition
The motion was granted in part and denied in part. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the motion at Docket No. 207. Judge Gregory H. Woods entered the order on November 10, 2023.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.