# Douglas Oil Co. of Cal. v. Petrol Stops Northwest

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 18, 1979 · 441 U.S. 211

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427536

## Case

- **Full name:** DOUGLAS OIL COMPANY OF CALIFORNIA Et Al. v. PETROL STOPS NORTHWEST Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 18, 1979
- **Citations:** 441 U.S. 211; 27 Fed. R. Serv. 2d 269; 99 S. Ct. 1667; 60 L. Ed. 2d 156; 1979 U.S. LEXIS 33
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Stevens
- **Judges:** Powell, Brennan, White, Marshall, Blackmun, Rehnquist, Stevens, Burger, Stewart
- **Cited by:** 919 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427536

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- concluding that there was no error in district court’s disclosure order, which allowed grand jury transcripts to' "be used solely for the purpose of impeaching that witness or refreshing the recollection of a witness, either in deposition or at trial” (ellipses and internal qu…
- explaining that, although the supervisory court is usually in the best position to evaluate the competing needs of secrecy and disclosure, courts in which related civil actions are pending are “armed with ... special knowledge of the status of the civil actions”
- stating that “[s]uch a showing must be made even when the grand jury whose transcripts are sought has concluded its operations, as it had in Dennis [v. United States, 384 U.S. 855, 86 S.Ct. 1840, 16 L.Ed.2d 973 (1966)]”
- explaining that the purposes of the secrecy requirement are to encourage witnesses to testify honestly, prevent grand jury subjects from unduly influencing grand jurors, and protect the accused from public shame
- explaining that in evaluating grand jury disclosures, “courts must consider not only the immediate effects upon a particular grand jury, but also the possible effect upon the functioning of future grand juries”

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Stevens,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Stewart join, dissenting.
Although I join all but the last nine paragraphs of the Court’s opinion, I cannot agree with the conclusion that the *234 District Judge sitting in the Central District of California should not have granted access to the grand jury transcripts subject to the conditions stated in his order. More fundamentally, I do not share the Court’s readiness to review the District Judge’s exercise of his broad discretion in this matter in the absence of any allegation of egregious abuse on his part and in the face of the confirmation of his conclusion by the Court of Appeals. 1
Before he acted, the District Judge allowed petitioners to participate as real parties in interest in order to explain their opposition to disclosure of the transcripts, 2 he offered to communicate with the District Judges in Arizona, 3 he obtained *235 the views of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, 4 and he compared the charges in the indictment with the allegations in the complaint for treble damages. 5 Everything called to his attention by respondents supported the conclusion that the grand jury transcripts would be highly relevant in the civil litigation, 6 and petitioners not only made no concrete showing of irrelevance in rebuttal, 7 but also passed *236 up two procedural opportunities to make such a showing. 8 Since the transcripts had already been' released to the defendants, no interest in protecting witnesses from possible retaliation remained. The Government foresaw no other secrecy problems.
Had I been the District Judge presented with respondents’ request, I would have exercised my discretion in the same way he did. In light of today’s holding, it now appears that I would have been wrong. But I do not find the Court’s view on the merits of the decision below nearly as troubling as its expansive view of its appellate function in this area in which trial judges usually have broad latitude. 9 Whatever its validity, the decision of the District Judge as affirmed by the Court *237 of Appeals was surely not very wide of the mark. Accordingly, for the Court to overturn that decision is to move decisively in the direction of equating an “abuse of discretion” with an exercise of discretion with which it disagrees. I cannot join in this rearrangement of the respective roles of trial and appellate courts.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the determination of the District Judge on the basis of the record before him showing the similarities between the indictment to which petitioners had pleaded no contest and the complaint in the treble-damages case. But the Court of Appeals went even further. On the basis of additional submissions by the parties on appeal, the Court of Appeals made a further finding of relevance premised on discrepancies between the biE of particulars filed by the Government in the criminal case and recent deposition testimony of petitioners’ employees in the civil case. Petrol Stops Northwest v. United States, 571 F. 2d 1127, 1130-1131 . Accordingly, the decision of the Court second-guesses not only the District Judge’s determination as affirmed by the Court of Appeals on its own terms, but also a second de novo determination by the Court of Appeals based on additional information.
Because the grand jury transcripts were in the possession of the United States, it was the nominal respondent in the action seeking disclosure of those transcripts. Although the Government did not oppose release of the transcripts, it did encourage the District Judge to allow petitioners to participate in the hearing as the “real parties in interest,” and the court acceded to the Government’s suggestion. App. 52, 90-100.
Petitioners consistently argued in the District Court that respondents’ motion for production of the transcripts under Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 6 (e) should be denied outright and respondents forced to pursue the request in the Arizona courts by way of motions to compel discovery under Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 37. In response to petitioners’ argument that the two District Judges in Arizona were the only appropriate recipients of respondents’ disclosure requests, the District Judge made the following statement:
“I would be very glad through an overabundance of precaution, if you *235 think it would be appropriate, to telephone Judge Walsh and Judge Frey to see if they have any objection, but it doesn't seem to me that I should relegate these people to make their application to those judges when they have taken what I think is a proper step in coming here.” App. 56.
Instead of responding that it would be "appropriate” for the judge to communicate with the judges in Arizona, counsel for petitioners once again reiterated the argument — implicitly rejected by the Court in today's decision — that the District Judge should simply have denied the Criminal Rule 6 (e) request and relegated the entire matter to the Arizona judges for decision under Civil Rule 37. See ante, at 226. The fact that petitioners relied exclusively on this admittedly invalid objection to the production request should bar them from making the new argument in this Court that the District Judge should have transferred the Rule 6 (e) motion to the Arizona courts. Even if that argument is cognizable here, I find inexplicable the Court's determination that the District Judge abused his discretion because the accommodation he suggested sua sponte— orally communicating with the judges in Arizona about the Rule 6 (e) motion and announcing their collective decision himself — is not the slightly different one that a majority of this Court would have chosen — formally transferring the Rule 6 (e) motion to the Arizona judges and forcing them to announce the collective decisions. See ante, at 230-231.
See App. 52, 61.
See id., at 57-59, 118-167. See also 571 F. 2d., at 1131.
The District Judge found as follows:
“As far as relevance, I would think that there is a prima facie relevance because of the nature of the grand jury inquiry with relation to the proceedings here concerned.” App. 58.
According to their counsel, the “main thrust” of petitioners’ argument before the District Judge was not that the transcripts are irrelevant to the treble-damages suit. Instead, petitioners’ primary reliance was on the incorrect argument, see ante, at 226, that respondents should have presented their request to the Arizona judges in the first instance. App. 55- *236 56. When they did reach the subject of relevance, petitioners’ comments were tentative at best. See, e. g., id., at 57 (emphasis added):
“MR. THURSTON [counsel for Douglas Oil]: ... It is possible that there were — not possible. It is the fact that those grand jury proceedings concerned a number of different levels of sale, both at the wholesale and retail levels, whereas the proceedings in Arizona may not involve such a broad territory.”
In addition to accepting the District Judge’s offer to consult with the Arizona judges on the subject of relevance, see n. 3, supra, petitioners could have requested that the District Judge view the transcripts in camera to test their relevance. See Dennis v. United States, 384 U. S. 855, 874 . In this discretionary area, it is particularly harsh to admonish a trial judge for failing to take steps that even the parties have not suggested should be taken.
Although the Court recognizes that it is customary for Rule 6 (e) determinations to be left to the “considered discretion” of the lower courts, ante, at 228, citing Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. United States, 360 U. S. 395, 399 , it finds support in Dennis v. United States, supra, for its rather exacting review of the exercise of that discretion. But in Dennis , the District Court had withheld grand jury testimony from a criminal defendant and had thereby run afoul of the view “that disclosure, rather than suppression, of relevant materials ordinarily promotes the proper administration of criminal justice.” 384 U. S., at 870-871 (emphasis added), citing Jencks v. United States, 353 U. S. 657 . See also Brady v. Maryland, 373 *237 U. S. 83 . Because the permissible scope of discretion in this civil litigation is not qualified by any special policy analogous to the one favoring disclosure in Dennis , I find little support in that ease for the result reached here.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9427536. Public record. Not legal advice.