Opinion ID: 75793
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The District Court's Rejection of Sibaja

Text: 28 As part of its sua sponte analysis under Erie, the district court addressed Sibaja and attempted to distinguish it from the present consolidated cases. In its order, the district court asserted that our court in Sibaja took great effort to limit the decision to the specific circumstances of that case. The district court focused on two passages in Sibaja, one stating that under the circumstances presented here, [the district court's decision] whether to exercise its jurisdiction and decide the case was not a decision going to the character and result of the controversy. Sibaja, 757 F.2d at 1219. The other passage referenced by the district court states: [T]he district court's application of the doctrine of forum non conveniens in this case did not operate as a state substantive rule of law and thus transgress Erie 's constitutional prohibition. Id. Based on the phrases under the circumstances presented here and in this case, the district court concluded that Sibaja left room for future cases involving the Erie doctrine and forum non conveniens to be decided differently. 29 Upon reaching this conclusion, the district court then proceeded to distinguish Sibaja from the present litigation. The court noted that in Sibaja, the state forum non conveniens standard at issue was less restrictive of the court's docket than the federal standard. 14 Hence, the district court maintained, the federal interest at stake in Sibaja was a federal court's inherent power to police and control its own docket against a floodgate of foreign lawsuits. This federal interest is not relevant to the present litigation, the court asserted, since the current Florida forum non conveniens standard is more restrictive of the court's docket than the federal standard, given that it does not consider the contacts a lawsuit might have with states other than Florida. Without this interest in restricting the federal docket at stake, the district court concluded that there was no countervailing federal interest that trumped the application of the outcome-determinative Florida forum non conveniens standard: 30 When the state standard is more restrictive than the federal standard, rather than more liberal, the danger of the district court becoming a de facto open forum, under the guise of diversity jurisdiction, dissipates. Thus, under the unique circumstances presented here, there is no compelling federal interest of self-regulation, which would warrant application of the federal standard over the state standard. 31 R2-52-17. 32 The district court decided that this narrow reading of Sibaja effectuates the dual aims of Erie, the prevention of forum shopping and of the inequitable administration of the laws. See Hanna, 380 U.S. at 468, 85 S.Ct. at 1142 (delineating the aims of the Erie doctrine). The court explained that its restricted reading of Sibaja discourages widespread forum shopping by plaintiffs, who would have an incentive to forum shop if contrary forum non conveniens standards applied in state courts and in federal courts sitting in the same state. Contrary standards also would discriminate between plaintiffs who can invoke diversity jurisdiction and those who cannot. The district court consequently rejected Sibaja as controlling precedent and dismissed the Appellants' lawsuits.