Yves Farms, Inc. v. Rickett

659 F. Supp. 932, 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3909
CourtDistrict Court, M.D. Georgia
DecidedMay 13, 1987
DocketCiv. A. 86-174-3-MAC
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 659 F. Supp. 932 (Yves Farms, Inc. v. Rickett) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, M.D. Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Yves Farms, Inc. v. Rickett, 659 F. Supp. 932, 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3909 (M.D. Ga. 1987).

Opinion

*934 FITZPATRICK, District Judge.

Pending before the court is Defendants’ motion to compel certain testimony from Plaintiff Yves Burgand, a citizen of France. Burgand’s deposition was noticed by Defendants for August 27, 1986. During that deposition session, Burgand refused to answer certain questions, claiming that the answers might incriminate him of violations under the criminal law of France. Plaintiff Burgand was deposed a second time during the month of February, 1987. Prior to the second deposition, Defendants filed their motion to compel, and the court held an emergency hearing the day before the scheduled deposition to discuss Burgand’s refusal to testify. At that time, the court allowed Burgand to maintain his refusal to answer until the court could fully and adequately consider the question of whether Burgand can invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. 1

I. FACTS

Plaintiffs filed suit in this court pursuant to the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1961-1968, stating claims under that Act and for common law fraud, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. Plaintiffs allege that they were defrauded by Defendants pursuant to a scheme to attract and defraud French investors by selling them property for inflated prices after making fraudulent representations about the property.

Plaintiff Burgand, a French citizen, initially learned about the potential for agricultural investments in the United States through advertisements placed in French newspapers and magazines by Defendants and their affiliates. The advertisements encouraged French citizens to invest in agricultural property in the United States, including Georgia. Plaintiff Burgand formed Yves Farms, Inc. to purchase the property in question. Michael Sadovic, a named Defendant, is a French agricultural consultant who made the arrangements with the French investors for the investment in pecan farms in Georgia. Plaintiff Burgand alleges that Sadovic, in conspiracy with the other named Defendants, enticed Burgand and several other foreign investors to purchase farm land at inflated prices by making false representations about the return and income production of the farms. At the time of the investment, Mr. Burgand could, according to his pleadings, speak little English.

Burgand claims that Defendants made written misrepresentations to him regarding the production figures and production capability of the farm, and that these representations caused Mr. Burgand to believe that he would receive an average income of $140,000.00 per year from the pecan harvest from the farm for at least ten years following his purchase. Plaintiff Burgand alleges that his average income from the pecan harvest has been less than $35,-000.00 per year. The difference over the ten year period, amounting to more than one million dollars, provides the basis for Plaintiffs’ damages claim in this case. Burgand additionally claims that he paid more for the farm than what it was worth, and has incurred expenses and losses in his attempts to operate the farm. Plaintiffs, and Defendants at Plaintiffs’ request, have been unable to sell the farm.

Defendants seek to compel Mr. Burgand to answer the following questions, relating to the source of the money Burgand used to pay for the pecan farm in question:

1.
How did the money [used to buy the farm] get to a New York Bank?
2.
Are you worried about incriminating yourself for violations of United States law or French law?
*935 3.
Are you making a similar claim for any questions I might ask you about the transfer of funds from the country of France to the country of the United States?
4.
Did the money used to buy the New-berry farm come from France?

Defendants suspect that the funds used to pay for the land were removed from the country of France in violation of French customs law. French law provides that a French resident who removes funds from the country without following certain enumerated procedures faces a prison term of not less than one and not more than five years, confiscation of the funds that were illegally removed and confiscation of the means used to transport those funds, plus a criminal fine. Thus, Defendants’ questions necessarily seek to obtain testimony from Burgand which may incriminate him if he removed the funds without following the French procedural mandates. The United States has no counterpart to these French currency laws.

After the dispute arose between Plaintiffs and Defendants, Plaintiff Burgand told Defendant Sadovic of the dissatisfaction of a separate French investor, who also purchased property through Defendants. Subsequently, according to Burgand’s testimony, the other French investor received a visit in France from the French police who had with them a warrant with the account number of the investor’s foreign bank account and the name of Mr. Sadovic. In addition, subsequent to the filing of this lawsuit by Plaintiff Burgand, Defendant Sadovic filed a claim against Plaintiff Burgand in the courts of France claiming, among other things, that Burgand violated French law when he removed the funds to purchase the pecan farm that is the subject of this lawsuit.

Defendants claim that the information as to how Plaintiff removed the funds from France is central to their defense. Defendants want to use this testimony to attack Burgand’s credibility and to negate one of the essential elements necessary for a showing of fraud. A successful claimant in a suit for common law fraud must show that he reasonably relied on the defendants’ misrepresentations. Defendants argue that if Burgand was attempting to quickly invest “hot”, illegally removed money in the United States, he may have neglected to exercise due care in investigating his purchase of the farm, thus negating his reasonable reliance on the Defendants’ representations.

The court has found no case authority from any federal court that squarely addresses the intriguing issue presented by the facts sub judice. The court has drawn from the scant related authority (primarily concerning foreign citizens’ Fifth Amendment rights in the context of grand jury proceedings or congressional investigations) to answer the question:

Can a citizen of a foreign country, who elects to use the federal courts of the United States to pursue a civil cause of action against United States defendants, utilize the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when the inculpatory testimony may incriminate him under the law of his home state, when there is no possibility of prosecution under any United States criminal statutes and when the foreign citizen’s home state has no privilege similar to the privilege afforded by the Fifth Amendment?

II. CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

The Supreme Court, in the case of Zicarelli v.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
659 F. Supp. 932, 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3909, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/yves-farms-inc-v-rickett-gamd-1987.