In re Vitamin C Antitrust Litigation, 837 F. 3d 175 - Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit 2016

—federal courts are "bound to defer" to a foreign government's construction of its own law, 837 F. 3d at 189, and instead held that "[a] federal court should accord respectful consideration to a foreign government's submission, but is not bound to accord conclusive effect to the foreign government's statements."

Cognizant of "competing authority" on this question, ibid., the Court of Appeals settled on a highly deferential rule: "[W] hen a foreign government, acting through counsel or otherwise, directly participates in US court proceedings by providing a [statement] regarding the construction and effect of [the foreign government's] laws and regulations, which is reasonable under …

We hold that the district court abused its discretion by not abstaining, on international comity grounds

—applying a multi-factor balancing test “[t] o determine whether to abstain from asserting jurisdiction on comity grounds

It found that there was a true conflict between US and Chinese law and then, after applying the other factors of the balancing test, determined that the factors weighed in favor of abstention.

Rule 44.1 therefore "has two purposes:(1) to make a court's determination of foreign law a matter of law rather than fact, and (2) to relax the evidentiary standard and to create a uniform procedure for interpreting foreign law."

Recently, the Second Circuit dismissed a case against Chinese manufacturers alleged to have fixed prices of Vitamin C

But defendants' comity argument rests entirely on a test that neither the Supreme Court nor the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has adopted.

The Appellees dispute the appropriate standard here, but their advocacy for abuse-of-discretion review relies on inapposite adjudicative comity cases. See Appellee Br. 27

—in determining that act of state doctrine applies, "[w] hether Defendants had a hand in the [foreign] government's decision to mandate some level of price-fixing is irrelevant"; the court will "decline to analyze why [the foreign government] regulated [a market] in the manner it did and instead focus on what [foreign] law required