This action is one for conspiracy to commit libel and slander. 1 It concerns statements that one of the defendants, Jerome Kaplan, allegedly made to a reporter for The Wall Street Journal regarding a stockholder derivative suit he had filed against the plaintiff, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. The district court denied the plaintiff discovery and, in an unpublished memorandum and order, dismissed the action for lack of personal jurisdiction. We affirm.
I.
Oscar Wyatt, a Texas resident, is the Chief Executive Officer of the Coastal Corporation (Coastal), which has its headquar *278 ters in Houston. Jerome Kaplan is a lawyer residing in Philadelphia and a Coastal stockholder. On November 5, 1980, Kaplan filed a stockholder derivative suit against Wyatt and Coastal in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint accused Wyatt of various misdeeds injurious to Coastal and included the allegation that Wyatt had “interpositioned himself in numerous . . . transactions with the resultant skimming off of substantial amounts of profits which otherwise would have gone to Coastal”. 2
On the same day, Steven Mufson, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, telephoned Kaplan and interviewed him about the suit. On November 6, 1980, The Wall Street Journal published a report of the suit. The next day the Journal carried a similar report in its southwestern edition, which is distributed in Texas. To the extent relevant in this defamation action, the two reports were virtually identical, and they read as follows:
NEW YORK — A suit charging Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr., chairman of Coastal Corp. with “skimming off substantial amounts of profits” from the company was filed here yesterday in U.S. District Court. . . .
Jerome Kaplan, a Philadelphia corporate, estate, and tax lawyer with the firm of Abrahams & Loenstein [sic], filed the suit because, he said, he “didn’t like what was going on.” .. .
The suit alleges that Mr. Wyatt “inter-positioned himself” in Coastal’s exchanges of crude oil and petroleum products on the spot market, keeping a portion of would-be profits for himself.
In addition, the suit charges that Coastal paid $326,266 to Mr. Wyatt for the use of his personal airplane.
Finally, the suit alleges that Mr. Wyatt influenced an ill-advised tanker deal benefiting a company owned predominantly by his son. Mr. Wyatt allegedly helped arrange the sale for $1 million of a Coastal tanker to WJS Shipping Associates, a partnership owned 56% by Clark D. Wyatt. WJS, after repairing the ship, would lease it back to Coastal for $2 million a year. * * * * * sjs
Wall St.J., Nov. 6, 1980, at 21, col. 1.
On December 9,1980, Wyatt brought this action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, naming as defendants Kaplan, his law firm, Abrahams & Loewenstein, the lawyers who represented him in the derivative suit, Richard M. Meyer and Melvyn I. Weiss, and their law firm, Milberg, Weiss, Bershad & Specthrie. Subject matter jurisdiction of the case was based on diversity of citizenship. 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1). The complaint alleged that Kaplan had “maliciously published to the Wall Street Journal ... false and untrue accusations concerning Wyatt”. Specifically, it accused Kaplan of telling Mufson that Wyatt was “skimming off substantial amounts of profits” from Coastal. The other defendants were alleged to have conspired with Kaplan in committing this libel and slander.
On February 9, 1981, the defendants moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, under Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(2). The next day, Wyatt noticed the depositions of the individual defendants and of three other lawyers, members of the defendant law firms. The defendants moved for a protective order, and the district court deferred the requested depositions pending its disposition of the motion to dismiss. On May 21, 1981, the district court granted the motion to dismiss, and the requested depositions never took place. Wyatt brought this appeal, in which he asserts two grounds for reversal. He argues that the district court committed reversible error both in denying him discovery to develop jurisdictional facts and in finding the evidence justified dismissal. Our resolution of the discovery question is best understood in the light of our analysis of the jurisdictional issue. We therefore consider first whether the evi *279 dence before the district court justified dismissal.
II.
Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a federal district court in a diversity case may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant residing outside the state in which it sits only to the extent permitted by state law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 4(d)(7), (e);
Gold Kist, Inc.
v.
Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream Co.,
5 Cir. 1980,
Wyatt seeks to premise personal jurisdiction on the Texas long-arm statute, which authorizes service of process on nonresidents who “engage in business” in Texas, “in any action . . . arising out of such business”. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 2031b § 2 (Vernon 1964) 3 Specifically, he relies on a provision that defines “doing business” to include “the committing of any tort in whole or in part in this State”. Tex.Rev. Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 2031b, § 4 (Vernon Supp. 1982). 4 The district court found that Wyatt had not adequately demonstrated the commission of a tort in Texas and concluded that article 2031b was inapplicable. Dismissing the action on this ground, the court did not consider the constitutional question. Although our reasoning differs slightly from that of the district court, we agree *280 with its conclusion and also find it unnecessary to reach the constitutional question.
On a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff rather than the movant has the burden of proof.
Southwest Offset, Inc. v. Hudco Publishing Co.,
5 Cir. 1980,
Wyatt alleges that when Kaplan spoke to Mufson in the telephone interview, he committed a tort by uttering defamatory statements, specifically the statement about “skimming off substantial amounts of profits”. The other defendants purportedly committed torts by conspiring with Kaplan. Wyatt further alleges that the torts occurred “in part” in Texas, where his reputation was damaged when the southwestern edition of The Wall Street Journal republished that language. 5 The defendants argue that Kaplan made no defamatory statement to Mufson and that the newspaper article quoted the language in question from the complaint filed in the New York derivative action. Allegations in a complaint filed in a judicial proceeding are privileged, see W. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts § 114, at 778 (4th ed. 1971), and Wyatt does not allege that he was injured in Texas by publication of statements in the complaint. 6 His case thus stands or falls with the assertion that the language quoted in the newspaper article originated in Kaplan’s telephone interview rather than the complaint. 7
*281 Wyatt submitted to the district court no affidavits in support of his position. He did submit copies of the newspaper article itself and a transcript of Kaplan’s deposition in the New York derivative action. The relevant parts of the deposition tended to establish that one of the quotes in the article was “essentially” what Kaplan said, that Kaplan may have accused Wyatt of “double-dealing” or something similar in the interview, and that Kaplan considered “double-dealing” synonymous with “skimming off”. 8 On this basis, Wyatt urged the district court to infer that Kaplan had used the term “skimming off” in the interview.
The defendants submitted an affidavit by Mufson, stating that he wrote the article, that the reference to “skimming off” substantial amounts of profits in the article was taken from the complaint in the derivative suit, and that Kaplan had not made the quoted statement to him. 9 Based on this evidence, the district court found that Wyatt had not discharged his burden. The court noted that the New York complaint contained language identical to that in the newspaper article and found that the article itself purported to quote the complaint, not the interview with Kaplan. 10 The court *282 also pointed out that the Kaplan deposition was ambiguous and could be read consistently with the Mufson affidavit. The district court therefore concluded that Wyatt did not make a prima facie case that Kaplan had uttered any defamation to Mufson.
We agree that Wyatt has not made the necessary showing, although we take an alternate route in reaching this conclusion. We find, as did the district court, that Kaplan’s deposition can be harmonized with Mufson’s affidavit. But we also find that the deposition, taken alone, might suggest the inferences that Wyatt urges. Even if we draw all these inferences, however, and disregard the conflicting assertions of the affidavit, see p. 5, we still conclude that Wyatt has not made a prima facie case that any tort was committed, even in part, in Texas.
The newspaper article, as the district court found, unmistakably attributes the language in question to the complaint. 11 Since the complaint did contain the “skimming off” language, we have no reason to doubt this attribution. Thus, even assuming that Kaplan used identical language in the interview, there is no evidence that this oral statement was republished in Texas. Wyatt relies entirely on the newspaper article for the republication element of his case, and the article unambiguously refutes his position.
We do not understand Wyatt to argue that the privilege accorded the allegations in the complaint, or The Wall Street Journal’s republication of them, may be defeated by Kaplan’s uttering similar, non-privileged, allegations to Mufson. Such an argument would find no support in precedent or policy and would, if accepted, unreasonably impair the privilege as it is now recognized. Wyatt argues only that the “skimming off” statement was in fact quoted from the telephone interview, and his own evidence unmistakably contradicts this argument. Because the article did indeed quote the complaint, we need not decide whether the privilege accorded the allegations in the complaint might extend to Kaplan’s extrajudicial assertion of similar or identical allegations. See note 6. We thus intimate no view whether Wyatt would have a cause of action if he could show that Kaplan, in his interview with Mufson, accused him of “skimming off substantial amounts of profits”. We hold only that for purposes of establishing publication in Texas, it is not enough to show that similar, or even identical, allegations from a privileged source were published there. 12
We conclude that Wyatt has not made a prima facie case for the assertion of personal jurisdiction. Restricting our consideration to the evidence he submitted, we hold that he failed to discharge his burden of showing that some part of a tort occurred in Texas. 13 We now turn to the *283 question whether he was improperly denied the opportunity to develop evidence that might have required a different outcome.
III.
Wyatt contends that the district court committed reversible error by dismissing his suit without permitting any discovery.’ Even if he did not make a prima facie case on the question of personal jurisdiction, he argues, discovery might have produced the necessary prima facie evidence, and the district court therefore erred in granting the defendants a protective order. It is unfair and illogical, according to Wyatt, to require that he shoulder the burden of coming forward with evidence of jurisdiction while denying him the opportunity to develop that evidence. Although Wyatt’s arguments are persuasive as general propositions, they do not require reversal in this case, because the discovery Wyatt requested would not have produced evidence supporting his case on jurisdiction.
Discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is broad in scope.
See
Fed. R.Civ.P. 26(b)(1);
id.
advisory committee note. Courts do not generally grant protective orders without a strong showing of “good cause”. 4 J. Moore & J. Lucas, Moore’s Federal Practice 126.69 at 26-494 to 26-495 (2d ed. 1982); 8 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2035 at 264-65 (1970). Orders prohibiting discovery by deposition are particularly disfavored. 8
Wright & Miller
§ 2037 at 272 (1970). When a defendant challenges personal jurisdiction, courts generally permit depositions confined to the issues raised in the motion to dismiss.
Id.,
§ 2009 at 52-54; 4A
Moore’s Federal Practice
130.-53[5]. In an appropriate case, we will not hesitate to reverse a dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction, on the ground that the plaintiff was improperly denied discovery.
E.g., Skidmore v. Syntex Laboratories,
5 Cir. 1976,
The district court, however, has broad discretion in all discovery matters.
Stewart v. Winter,
5 Cir. 1982,
The scope of permissible discovery is limited by the requirement of relevance, although relevance is broadly defined in the context of discovery. It is not error to deny discovery when there is no issue of material fact.
Poirier v. Carson,
5 Cir. 1976,
Wyatt asserts two theories under which discovery might have helped him establish personal jurisdiction. He contends, first, that the requested depositions would have bolstered his position that Kaplan made the “skimming off” remark to Mufson, 16 and second, that discovery might have produced evidence of the defendants’ additional contacts with Texas. The first argument, of course, relies on a premise we rejected in Part I of this opinion: even if discovery established that Kaplan made the remark, there is no evidence that it was published in Texas. Wyatt does not assert, and could not, plausibly, that discovery would produce evidence refuting the unmistakable purport of the newspaper article that the “skimming off” language came from the complaint rather than the interview. Wyatt’s other argument is no more persuasive, because the existence, if established, of the defendants’ additional contacts with Texas is irrelevant to the question of personal jurisdiction in this case.
The Texas Supreme Court has said that the state’s long-arm statute, on which Wyatt relies, establishes personal jurisdiction to the full extent permitted by due process.
U-Anchor Advertising, Inc. v. Burt,
Tex. 1977,
CONCLUSION
Dismissal of this case for lack of personal jurisdiction was appropriate. The plaintiff relied on the Texas long-arm statute and the theory that the defendants committed torts with effects in Texas, but his own *286 evidence contradicted this theory. That evidence also established that the motion to dismiss entailed no dispute concerning material facts. Discovery would therefore not have advanced the plaintiff’s position on the jurisdictional issue, and the district court did not abuse its discretion in disposing of the case without allowing the parties the benefits of discovery.
The order of the district court is AFFIRMED.
Notes
. The original complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, also alleged conspiracy to commit barratry and abuse of process. For reasons that will become apparent from our discussion, those claims are not before us in this appeal. See note 5.
. On January 28, 1981, the district court in New York dismissed the derivative suit, without prejudice, for improper venue.
. Section 2 of article 2031b provides in full:
Sec. 2. When any foreign corporation, association, joint stock company, partnership, or non-resident natural person, though not required by any Statute of this State to designate or maintain an agent, shall engage in business in this State, in any action in which such corporation, joint stock company, association, partnership, or non-resident natural person is a party or is to be made a party arising out of such business, service may be made by serving a copy of the process with the person who, at the time of the service, is in charge of any business in which the defendant or defendants are engaged in this State, provided a copy of such process, together with notice of such service upon such person in charge of such business shall forthwith be sent to the defendant or to the defendants [sic] principal place of business by registered mail, return receipt requested. Section 3 of the statute provides that if a
nonresident defendant “engages in business in this State” but “does not maintain a place of regular business in this State or a designated agent upon whom service may be made ... ”, then the act of doing business in Texas “shall be deemed equivalent to an appointment ... of the Secretary of State of Texas as agent upon whom service of process may be made in any action, suit or proceedings arising out of such business done in this State”. Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat. Ann. art. 2031b, § 3 (Vernon 1964). In the present case, the plaintiff served the Texas Secretary of State pursuant to § 3.
. Section 4 of article 2031b provides in full:
Sec. 4. For the purpose of this Act, and without including other acts that may constitute doing business, any foreign corporation, joint stock company, association, partnership, or non-resident natural person shall be deemed doing business in this State by entering into contract by mail or otherwise with a resident of Texas to be performed in whole or in part by either party in this State, or the committing of any tort in whole or in part in this State. The act of recruiting Texas residents, directly or through an intermediary located in Texas, for employment inside or outside of Texas shall be deemed doing business in this State.
. This theory of long-arm jurisdiction, which involves a wrong committed outside the state with effects in the state, apparently cannot apply to Wyatt’s claims for barratry and abuse of process, see note 1. For this reason Wyatt does not press those claims in this appeal. See Appellant’s Original Brief at 9 n.23.
. This common law rule is recognized in New York by statute. “[A] civil action cannot be maintained against any person ... for the publication of a fair and true report of any judicial proceeding.” N.Y.Civ. Rights Law § 94 (McKinney).
See The Savage is Loose Co. v. United Artists , Theatre Circuit, Inc.,
. It is not clear that Wyatt would prevail even if he could establish that
The Wall Street Journal
was quoting Kaplan’s statements in the telephone interview. The defendants argue that the privilege accorded judicial proceedings extends to repetition by the parties of allegations in the complaint. Wyatt concedes that this argument might be sound under the law of New York,
see The Savage Is Loose Co. v. United Artists Theatre Circuit, Inc.,
S.D.N.Y. 1976,
Wyatt also argues that privilege is an affirmative defense, which the defendants may not
*281
raise on the question of personal jurisdiction, when the plaintiff’s burden is only to establish a
prima facie
case. We need not decide any of these issues, however, because we find that Wyatt has not made a
prima facie
showing that the article was quoting Kaplan,
see
p. 7. Texas law clearly recognizes, and Wyatt does not dispute, the privilege of papers filed in judicial proceedings.
Morris
v.
Hargrove,
Tex.Civ.App.1961,
. Wyatt relies essentially on the following portions of Kaplan’s deposition:
Q. And did you comment about [the lawsuit to Mr. Mufson]?
A. I said no, I wouldn’t comment about it. Then he asked me why I filed it, and there is a quote in this article which is essentially what I said, I don’t remember the exact words, that I didn’t like the double-dealing that I think had occurred. Q. That you think what?
A. “That I think may have occurred in connection with Coastal.” * * * * * *
Q. When you mentioned to him that you didn’t like the double-dealing, what do you mean by “double-dealing”?
A. I don’t like, just as I said, I don’t like corporate officers, if it occurs, to use their position to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the stockholders. * * * * * *
Q. What does “double-dealing” mean in the corporate context? Does it mean to you that the corporate officer is taking something that doesn’t belong to him and properly belongs to the corporation?
A. It could be.
Q. Is that what it meant to you when you talked to this Wall Street Journal reporter?
A. That if he was using his position to benefit himself on the expense of the stockholders, yes.
Kaplan Dep. 19-21 (emphasis added).
Q. Is that “skimming off” language the same or does it mean the same thing as does “double-dealing"?
A. Yes.
Kaplan Dep. 28.
Q. Did you use the words “skimming off profits” in your conversation? * * * * * *
A. I don’t recall the exact words I used.
Kaplan Dep. 48-49.
Q. You are saying double-dealing is the same as skimming off profits?
A. Substantially, self-aggrandizement at the expense of the stockholders.
Kaplan Dep. 67-68.
Q. Are the articles, Kaplan Exhibits 2 and 3, accurate reflections of what you told the Wall Street Journal reporter during the conversation relative to this suit?
A. Yes.
Kaplan Dep. 126.
. The defendants also submitted affidavits by the other individual defendants, concerning their contacts with Texas generally. Although not relevant here, these affidavits may bear on the theory of personal jurisdiction Wyatt asserts in his argument on discovery. See Part III.
. The New York complaint referred to “skimming off of substantial amounts of profits” (emphasis added). The deletion in the newspaper article of the word “of”, which had the effect of fitting the quotation to its grammatical surroundings, cannot impeach the article’s attribution of the language to “a suit charging” the misdeeds in question, Wall St. J., Nov. 6, 1980, at 21, col. 1 (emphasis added).
. The article did quote Kaplan as saying that he “didn’t like what was going on”, and Wyatt argues that this statement was also defamatory. He did not quote this statement in his complaint, however, and to the extent he may assert it as a basis for relief, he has not stated a cause of action under the law of Texas, which Wyatt would apply, or that of New York, which the defendants suggest is applicable.
See Murray v. Harris,
Tex.Civ.App.1938,
. It bears emphasis that in finding the quotation in the newspaper article to have originated in the complaint, we rely entirely on the irrefutable evidence to that effect. We are mindful of the possibility that other, similar cases could arise in which the evidence does not conclusively establish which of several possible sources an allegedly defamatory quotation is taken from. Our decision in this case does not imply a presumption favoring attribution to any particular source, privileged or otherwise, in cases where the actual source of quoted language is subject to a genuine factual dispute.
. As an alternative basis for personal jurisdiction, Wyatt’s complaint might be read loosely to allege that the defendants “engage in business” in Texas apart from the commission of any tort. On a motion to dismiss for lack of
*283
personal jurisdiction, the allegations of the complaint are taken as true to the extent they are not contradicted by affidavits.
Black v. Acme Markets, Inc.,
5 Cir. 1977,
. Although Wyatt’s arguments in this appeal address discovery of jurisdictional facts, he apparently sought general discovery in the district court, and it is not clear that he has now abandoned that broader request. To the extendiscovery on jurisdictional matters might be permitted where general discovery is not, the defendants point out that Wyatt did not specifically seek limited discovery in the district court. We cannot predicate reversal on the denial of discovery that was never sought.
See Rosemound Sand & Gravel Co. v. Lambert Sand & Gravel Co.,
5 Cir. 1972,
. The
Washington
opinion stated that the discovery at issue “could not have added any significant facts
and would only have been expensive and burdensome for the nonresident corporation".
. Wyatt argues, in this connection, that a deposition of Mufson might have impeached his affidavit, in which he swore that Kaplan did not use this language. As the defendants point out, however, Wyatt did not notice the deposition of Mufson and cannot now complain of being denied the opportunity to depose him.
See Rosemound Sand & Gravel Co. v. Lambert Sand & Gravel Co.,
5 Cir. 1972,
. The court in
U-Anchor
ultimately found that the defendant’s contacts with Texas were insufficient to justify the assertion of personal jurisdiction under due process standards.
. Wyatt argues that discovery might have established additional defamatory statements by Kaplan to friends and clients in Texas. He relies on Kaplan’s statement, in his deposition in the derivative suit, that after the newspaper article appeared, he discussed the case with “[fjriends, clients, relatives, my wife, my son, everybody [that asked me about it]”. Kaplan Dep. 29-30. According to Wyatt, if discovery established that any of these friends and clients were in Texas, this would provide “a specific basis for personal jurisdiction” under article 2031b. Although such additional defamatory utterances would affect personal jurisdiction in an action arising from them, they are irrelevant here because they are not the Texas contacts out of which this defamation action arose. Wyatt’s complaint unambiguously limits its allegations to statements Kaplan made to Mufson.
Wyatt also argues that Tex.Civ.Proc. Rules Ann.R. 108 (Vernon 1979) affords an additional basis for personal jurisdiction, independent-of the special requirements of art. 2031b. Rule 108 sets out the procedures for serving notice on a nonresident defendant and provides that
[a] defendant served with such notice shall be required to appear and answer in the same manner and time and under the same penalties as if he had been personally served with a citation within this state to the full extent that he may be required to appear and answer under the Constitution of the United States in an action either in rem or in person-am.
Tex.Civ.Proc. Rules Ann.R. 108 (Vernon 1979) (emphasis added). According to Wyatt, this is not just a procedural rule but a separate long-arm statute establishing personal jurisdiction to the full extent permitted by due process. If this interpretation is correct, the defendants’ contacts with Texas, though they did not give rise to the present cause of action, might afford a basis for personal jurisdiction, if those contacts were “continuous and systematic”. Rule 108, however, does not have the force Wyatt ascribes to it.
Aamco Automatic Transmissions, Inc. v. Evans Advertising Agency, Inc.,
Tex.Civ.App.1970,