Fremont Energy Corporation v. The Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Hearst Corporation, John E. Moss, Chairman, Movant-Appellant

John E. Moss appeals from an order of the district court for the Eastern District of California adjudging him in contempt of court for failure adequately to respond to the directions of a subpoena duces tecum.

Moss is a former member of Congress and the former chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. In December 1978, that subcommittee issued a report on uranium lode mining claims on federal lands. The report apparently was critical of the activities of the Fremont Energy Corporation, and two articles in the Seattle Post Intelligencer reporting that criticism are the subject of a libel suit brought by Fremont against that newspaper in the Western District of Washington. Through its discovery efforts in that case Fremont learned that Dan Seligman, a reporter for the Post Intel ligencer, had telephoned Moss concerning the report on January 28, 1979, some three weeks after Moss’s final term in Congress had expired. Fremont thereupon secured the issuance of a subpoena duces tecum by the Clerk of the District Court for the Eastern District of California, which subpoena was served upon Moss in Sacramento,…