Opinion ID: 6331470
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Place of injury.

Text: With the above framework in mind, we hold that the district court correctly determined that California law applies to Nunes’s claims because (1) the complaint alleges with substantial detail Nunes’s connection to California and the importance of his reputation among the constituents in his district, and (2) nothing alleged in the complaint suggests countervailing circumstances sufficient to overcome the presumption that his greatest reputational harm occurred in his home state. We therefore disagree with Nunes’s arguments to the contrary. Nunes argues that “[e]ven if the Court were to follow” the district court’s rationale, “the fact is that [his] injuries are concentrated (2) the importance of the issue to the state; and (3) the capacity of certification to resolve the litigation.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Because we find sufficient authority with which to predict the Virginia Supreme Court’s disposition of this issue, and because we do not certify questions to a state’s highest court “routinely”—indeed, “[t]he procedure must not be a device for shifting the burdens of this Court to those whose burdens are at least as great,” DiBella v. Hopkins, 403 F.3d 102, 111 (2d Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted)—we decline to certify the issue here. 24 in Virginia or the District of Columbia where [he] works.” Appellant’s Br. at 32 n.5. We are unpersuaded by this argument, which is unsupported by the allegations in Nunes’s complaint. Nunes was domiciled in California and, as one of California’s representatives in Congress, was accountable to his constituents there. The complaint describes his extensive ties to that state, not Virginia or the District of Columbia. See Joint App’x at 16–17. To be sure, the complaint does allege that Nunes suffered some reputational harm outside of California, see, e.g., id. at 61 (alleging that CNN “intentionally and unlawfully imped[ed] . . . . [Nunes’s] duties as a United States Congressman, including the performance of his duties as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee during the impeachment inquiry”); id. at 41 (alleging that CNN’s goal “was to inflict maximum damage to [his] reputation . . . and to cause him to be removed from the impeachment inquiry”). But these allegations are insufficient to overcome the presumption that Nunes suffered the 25 greatest harm in his home state of California among those constituents who were responsible for sending him to Washington, D.C., in the first place. See Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678–79 (2009) (requiring a plaintiff to offer more than “naked assertions devoid of further factual enhancement” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Nunes’s reliance on Nunes v. WP Co., 2021 WL 3550896, also does not alter this outcome. The court in WP found that Nunes suffered the greatest harm in the District of Columbia because the defendant there, the Washington Post, “reports on local D.C. news and is more directed toward D.C. audiences than media outlets such as CNN.” Id. at . Additionally, unlike the complaint here, the complaint in that case did not include factual allegations further supporting the presumption that Nunes suffered the greatest injury in California. Likewise, we reject Nunes’s assertion that the choiceof-law issue here cannot be decided “without evidence,” Appellant’s Br. at 33–34, because, first, Nunes does not describe what is not 26 currently known but that could be determined through discovery and, second, he makes no cogent argument as to why any discovery would be required to adequately allege a reputational tort on the basis of widely publicized news articles and broadcasts. In sum, the district court did not err in applying Virginia’s lex loci delicti rule by determining where the plaintiff suffered the greatest injury, which is presumptively the state of plaintiff’s domicile. The district court also correctly held that California law applied to Nunes’s defamation action under this framework. C. The California retraction statute is a substantive rule of decision under Virginia law. The district court determined that California’s retraction statute, California Civil Code § 48a, is a substantive law and thus applies under Virginia’s choice-of-law rules because “limits on recovery are substantive law.” CNN, 520 F. Supp. 3d at 560 (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing Price v. Stossel, 07-cv-11364, 2008 WL 2434137, at  n.12 (S.D.N.Y. June 4, 2008) (noting that “[a]t least one 27 court in this District [] has found the [California retraction] statute applicable in diversity actions . . . and another has implied that the statute is substantive . . . .”) (alterations in original)). On appeal, Nunes does not challenge the district court’s determination that he failed to request a correction, as required by section 48a, or its determination that he did not adequately plead special damages. Instead, he claims that the district court erred in applying that statute because it is procedural rather than substantive under Virginia law. We disagree. To determine whether a state statute is a substantive rule of decision that a district court is bound to apply in a diversity action, we must discern whether “state conflict-of-law principles” require application of that statute if the case “were brought in [the applicable] 28 state court.” Liberty Synergistics Inc. v. Microflo Ltd., 718 F.3d 138, 153 (2d Cir. 2013). 6 Under Virginia conflict-of-law principles, the lex loci delicti doctrine determines the choice of substantive law while procedural matters are governed by Virginia law. See Hooper v. Musolino, 234 Va. 558, 566 (1988). If a provision of a statute “goes to the very right of the action . . . it is a matter of substantive law.” Willard v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 213 Va. 481, 483 (1973). “[W]hile the right to recovery and the limits on recovery are substantive law, the distribution of the recovery is remedial law.” Walters v. Rockwell Int’l Corp., 559 F. Supp. 47, 49–50 (E.D. Va. 1983); accord Spring v. United States, 833 F. Supp. 575, 579 (E.D. Va. 1993) (finding that a statute involving “limits on recovery” is a substantive rule of decision); see also Baise v. Warren, 158 6 Typically, a federal court must also consider whether the rule of decision “is ‘substantive’ within the meaning of Erie,” which “is a question of federal law.” Liberty Synergistics Inc., 718 F.3d at 152. We do not reach this issue because Nunes argues only that Virginia law precludes the application of the California retraction statute. 29 Va. 505, 508 (1932) (noting that “the rights of the parties with respect to their causes of action are governed by the lex loci” while laws concerning “the admissibility of evidence and the enforcement of those rights are governed by the lex fori”). The California retraction statute provides that “[i]n any action for damages for the publication of a libel in a daily or weekly news publication, or of a slander by radio broadcast, plaintiff shall only recover special damages unless a correction is demanded and is not published or broadcast.” Cal. Civ. Code § 48a(a). Moreover, the statute requires that such a request “be served within 20 days after knowledge of the publication or broadcast of the statements claimed to be libelous.” Id. Under Virginia choice-of-law rules, we hold that this statute is substantive, not procedural. It substantially limits—and may even preclude—a defendant’s liability for defamation and therefore alters the “rights of the [plaintiff] with respect to the[] cause[] of action.” Baise, 158 Va. at 508; see Jones v. R.S. Jones & Assocs., 30 Inc., 246 Va. 3, 7 (1993) (finding a statute specifically limiting liability under a right of action to be substantive); Hoilett v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 81 Va. Cir. 176, 2010 WL 11020458, at  (Va. Cir. Ct. 2010) (holding that a Maryland statutory cap on non-economic damages for wrongful death suits is substantive as a matter of Virginia law). Thus, the district court correctly applied the California retraction statute to this dispute. As noted above, Nunes makes no claim that he complied with the procedures outlined in section 48a. Accordingly, the district court did not err in concluding that California Civil Code § 48a governs, that Nunes failed to comply with that statute because he did not make a timely demand for a correction from CNN, and that the complaint should therefore be dismissed with prejudice for failure to state a claim. Dismissal is required because, as the district court correctly found, the complaint does not allege special damages with the necessary specificity under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(g), and instead merely alleges “special 31 damages” by including those words conclusorily in the general allegations of damages. 7 Lastly, because, under California law, conspiracy “[s]tanding alone . . . does no harm and engenders no tort liability,” Applied Equip. Corp. v. Litton Saudi Arabia Ltd., 869 P.2d 454, 457 (Cal. 1994), the district court also correctly dismissed Nunes’s civil conspiracy claim with prejudice.