Transnational Employment Disputes and Forum Non Conveniens

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When a company headquartered in the United States enters into an employment contract with an individual working abroad, both parties generally expect the relationship to be mutually beneficial. In most cases, these expectations are realized. In a small number of cases, however, the relationship collapses into acrimony. When this occurs, the U.S. employer may bring a lawsuit against the employee in U.S. court.

Such lawsuits face a number of obstacles. The first, and most obvious, is personal jurisdiction. In many instances, the foreign employee may lack sufficient contacts with the United States for U.S. courts to assert personal jurisdiction. Even if this obstacle is overcome, however, the employee may still argue that it would be more convenient to litigate the dispute in the country where the worker resides. Indeed, this is precisely what occurred in QF Holdings v. Choudhury, a case recently decided by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee (Judge Aleta Trauger). In this case, a U.S. company headquartered in Tennessee sued a former employee who lived and worked in India. The court then had to decide whether the case should be litigated in Tennessee or in India.

QF Holdings v. Choudhury

Subrata Choudhury, a resident of Gujarat, India, is a software engineer. In 2012, he began working for IHCS Technologies Private Limited (IHCS), a company based in India. In 2021, IHCS was acquired by QF Holdings, Inc. (QF), a U.S. company headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. In December 2021, Choudhury signed an agreement with QF in which he agreed not to compete with QF or solicit its employees. In 2025, Choudhury was terminated after he allegedly created a competing business in India and recruited his co-workers to join this new venture.

In August 2025, QF sued Choudhury in federal district court in Tennessee. The complaint alleged breach of contract, breach of a fiduciary duty of loyalty, conspiracy to commit breach of fiduciary duty of loyalty, and fraudulent concealment. QF also sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction prohibiting Choudhury from disclosing any proprietary information, competing with it, soliciting its clients, or soliciting its employees.

Choudhury moved to dismiss for forum non conveniens. He argued that Tennessee was not a convenient place for trial because the allegedly offending conduct occurred in India, the relevant witnesses lived and worked in India, and the alleged breach of contract had occurred in India. He also pointed out that travel between India in the United States is expensive.

Applying the forum non conveniens framework laid down by the Sixth Circuit, the district court first concluded that India was an adequate alternative forum. It then accorded “great deference” to the plaintiff company’s choice of forum because it had filed suit in its home jurisdiction. With these first two issues resolved, the court then considered the public and private interest factors.

With respect to the public interest factors, the court identified six to consider: (1) the respective governments’ interests in the dispute, (2) the location of the injury, (3) the condition of the involved court’s docket, (4) the location of the governing law, (5) hesitation to apply foreign law, and (6) avoidance of conflict-of-law problems. It concluded that these factors did not weigh heavily in favor of either party. It observed that both governments had an interest in the dispute, that the injury had been suffered in Tennessee because the company was based there, and that some of the choice-of-law issues favored dismissal and that others favored retaining the case. The court did not address the condition of either court’s docket.

With respect to the private interest factors, the court identified five to consider: (1) access to evidence, (2) mechanisms for ensuring participation of unwilling witnesses, (3) costs of obtaining testimony from willing witnesses, (4) opportunities to view the relevant premises, and (5) practical concerns such as cost and expeditiousness. Although the court found that these factors weighed “slightly” in the defendant’s favor, they did not weigh strongly enough in favor of dismissal to overcome the “great deference” accorded to the plaintiff company’s choice of forum. Accordingly, the court denied Choudhury’s motion to dismiss for forum non conveniens.

Reactions

I had three reactions to QF Holdings v. Choudhury.

First, I was baffled by the court’s conclusion that the private interest factors only “slightly” favored the defendant. The allegedly competing business was based in India. All of the employees alleged to have been wrongfully solicited lived in India. Indeed, virtually everyone with first-hand knowledge of the events in question seemingly resided in India. If the private interest factors are truly focused on matters such as access to evidence and witnesses, then it is not at all clear to me why these factors did not cut more strongly in favor of dismissal.

Second, I found the court’s recitation of the public interest factors placed too great an emphasis on foreign law and choice of law. In fairness to the district court, this appears to be a problem with Sixth Circuit precedent rather than the district court’s analysis. I do not believe, however, this particular formulation of the test—in which three of the six factors were devoted to foreign law and choice-of-law—accurately captures the doctrinal rule. Here is the relevant passage from the Supreme Court’s classic decision in Gilbert v Gulf Oil (1947):

Factors of public interest also have place in applying the doctrine. Administrative difficulties follow for courts when litigation is piled up in congested centers instead of being handled at its origin. Jury duty is a burden that ought not to be imposed upon the people of a community which has no relation to the litigation. In cases which touch the affairs of many persons, there is reason for holding the trial in their view and reach rather than in remote parts of the country where they can learn of it by report only. There is a local interest in having localized controversies decided at home. There is an appropriateness, too, in having the trial of a diversity case in a forum that is at home with the state law that must govern the case, rather than having a court in some other forum untangle problems in conflict of laws, and in law foreign to itself.

I will leave it to the reader to decide whether the Sixth Circuit test referenced above is consistent with this language.

Third, and finally, I questioned why the court failed to engage with a prior Sixth Circuit case: Jones v. IPX International Equatorial Guinea, S.A. (2019). The plaintiff in Jones was a Michigan citizen who lived and worked overseas for most of his adult life. In 2011, he started a company in Equatorial Guinea. After Jones had a falling out with the managers of that company, he sued in Michigan (his home forum). The court granted the company’s motion to dismiss for forum non conveniens because (1) most of the witnesses and key documents were in Equatorial Guinea, (2) flights between the two countries were expensive, and (3) the choice-of-law issues presented were complex. All of these facts were equally true in QF Holdings v. Choudhury. Nevertheless, the defendant’s motion to dismiss for forum non conveniens was granted in Jones and denied in QF Holdings.