Opinion ID: 5175677
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Decisional Law

Text: Alexandre first contends that the district court erred when, following the transfer of the action from the Southern District of Florida, it granted summary judgment to National Union using the First Circuit's Wickman framework, rather than granting summary judgment to Alexandre on the basis of the Eleventh Circuit's presumption against suicide and in favor of an accident, as articulated in Horton. Alexandre further argues that the First Circuit decision upon which the district court relied in applying the transferee court's law as opposed to that of the transferor court -- namely, AER Advisors, Inc. v. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, 921 F.3d 282 (1st Cir. 2019) -- contravenes Supreme Court guidance and should be overruled.16 By contrast, National Union contends as a threshold matter that Alexandre's argument that Eleventh Circuit precedent controls is waived because Alexandre did not make this 'governing law' argument below; in the alternative, National Union argues that the First Circuit's decision in AER Advisors properly controls and, thereby, dictates that the law of the First Circuit -- as the 16To clear up any confusion that may be caused by the legalese, here, the Florida federal court was the transferor court and the Massachusetts federal court was the transferee court. - 15 - transferee court considering a federal question -- applies.
We find National Union's first contention -- that Alexandre did not preserve her governing law argument -- to be overly formalistic. After the case was transferred from the Florida District Court to the Massachusetts District Court, Alexandre continued to argue that the Eleventh Circuit's presumption against suicide, as elucidated in Horton, should apply. For example, in Alexandre's Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Defendant's Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment submitted to the district court, Alexandre contested National Union's motion for dismissal predicated on our Wickman decision, asserting: Because the facts underlying the Wickman decision are materially distinguishable from the facts underlying this case, [National Union's] cross-motion for summary judgment should be denied and [Alexandre's motion for summary judgment] should be granted on the authority of the decision in Horton v. Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, 141 F.3d 1038 (11th Cir. 1998). While Alexandre's Opposition Memorandum to the district court may not have included the specific words governing law, implicit in her argument is the question of which circuit's case law applies following the transfer of a case under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a); this is so because a federal court in Massachusetts would not decide a case on the authority of the Eleventh Circuit's precedent without determining that it was the governing law. - 16 - Moreover, the district court understood Alexandre's statements to comprise a governing law argument and, thus, responded to it as such. For example, in its Memorandum and Order on Cross-Motions for Summary Judgment, the district court declared: As an initial matter, Eleventh Circuit precedents are not binding on the Court. And that remains true here even though the case was originally filed in the Southern District of Florida. The First Circuit recently explained that after a federal-question case is transferred pursuant to § 1404(a), the transferee court should apply its own circuit's precedents concerning the meaning of federal law. Because we agree with the district court's assessment that Alexandre raised a governing law argument below, we find no waiver. As such, we proceed to consider and reject Alexandre's governing law argument on the merits.
Alexandre's argument that the law of the Eleventh Circuit -- as the transferor court -- applies is foreclosed by our decision in AER Advisors, supra p. 15. Precedent is a bedrock to our system of adjudication. See United States v. Barbosa, 896 F.3d 60, 74 (1st Cir. 2018). Our 'law of the circuit' doctrine, a subset of stare decisis, dictates that newly constituted panels in a multi-panel circuit court are bound by prior panel decisions that are closely on point. San Juan Cable LLC v. P.R. Tel. Co., Inc., 612 F.3d 25, 33 (1st Cir. 2010) (emphasis added) (citing United States v. Rodríguez–Vélez, 597 F.3d 32, 46 (1st - 17 - Cir. 2010) and United States v. Wogan, 938 F.2d 1446, 1449 (1st Cir. 1991)). Although this rule is not 'immutable,' the exceptions are extremely narrow and their incidence is hen's- teeth-rare. Id. (quoting Carpenters Local Union No. 26 v. U.S. Fid. & Guar. Co., 215 F.3d 136, 142 (1st Cir. 2000)). Absent special circumstances, -- such as a ruling of the Circuit sitting en banc -- we are duty bound to follow our prior holding. United States v. Hudson, 823 F.3d 11, 15 (1st Cir. 2016) (citing United States v. Chhien, 266 F.3d 1, 11 (1st Cir. 2001) (listing exceptions)). Quite apart from the fact that a single panel is generally not authorized to overrule a prior panel's decision, Alexandre offers no new or previously unaddressed reason to deviate from our recent decision in AER Advisors; we decline her invitation to overrule that precedent and to apply the Eleventh Circuit's Horton presumption to her claim. Alexandre acknowledges that her claim comprises a federal question for the purposes of federal court jurisdiction. In AER Advisors, we explained that when one district court transfers a case to another, the norm is that the transferee court applies its own Circuit's cases on the meaning of federal law. 921 F.3d at 288 (emphasis added). 17 Nevertheless, Alexandre 17As we noted in AER Advisors, this principle has been endorsed by at least the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits. See id. at 288 n.5 (collecting cases). - 18 - invokes the Supreme Court cases Van Dusen v. Barrack, 376 U.S. 612 (1964) and Ferens v. John Deere Co., 494 U.S. 516 (1990) -- which held that in diversity cases18 the transferee courts must apply the substantive law of the transferor courts -- to contend that [t]he inference to be drawn from the foregoing is ineluctable: in any civil action, whether based upon the parties' diverse citizenship or a federal question, following a transfer under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a), the transferee court is obligated to apply the transferor court's governing law. (emphasis added). However, we considered and rejected this exact argument in AER Advisors, explaining that Van Dusen and Ferens are diversity cases. And with diversity cases, federalism commands that federal judges apply state substantive law exactly as a state court would. 921 F.3d at 289 (citing Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78 (1938)). Whereas with 'the adjudication of federal claims,' federal courts ordinarily 'comprise a single system in which each tribunal endeavors to apply a single body of law,' and if different circuits view federal law differently, then the Supreme Court can restore 'uniformity.' Id. at 288 (quoting In re Korean Air Lines Disaster of Sept. 1, 1983, 829 F.2d 1171, 18Diversity cases are those cases over which federal courts can assert jurisdiction because the parties are citizens of different states and the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000. McKenna v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 693 F.3d 207, 211–12 (1st Cir. 2012) (citing 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)). - 19 - 1175, 1176 (D.C. Cir. 1987), aff'd on other grounds sub nom. Chan v. Korean Air Lines, Ltd., 490 U.S. 122 (1989)). Thus, we declared in AER Advisors that '[n]othing' in Van Dusen [or Ferens] compels one federal court to apply another's interpretation of federal law after a case's transfer. Id. at 290 (emphasis in original).19 In sum, Alexandre has supplied no novel arguments that compel us to overturn our decision in AER Advisors. Adhering to our precedent, we find that the district court did not err in ruling that the decisional law of the First Circuit -- namely, the 19 For similar reasons, Alexandre's reliance on Viernow v. Euripides Development Corp., 157 F.3d 785 (10th Cir. 1998) -- a case we did not earlier consider in AER Advisors -- is unavailing, as it is a non-binding diversity case that concerned only state law claims. Nevertheless, Alexandre cites Viernow as part of her argument that 28 U.S.C. § 1631 -- transfer to cure want of jurisdiction -- comprises the exclusive exception to Alexandre's asserted general principle that in any civil action, the transferee court must apply the transferor court's governing law following a § 1404(a) transfer. The problem for Alexandre is that Viernow does not state such a rule. And moreover, dicta in at least one other Tenth Circuit opinion indicates that our sister circuit, likewise, accepts the general approach that we adopted in AER Advisors for federal-question cases. See Olcott v. Del. Flood Co., 76 F.3d 1538, 1546 (10th Cir. 1996) (agreeing with a Seventh Circuit case explaining that a transferee court normally should use its own best judgment about the meaning of federal law when evaluating a federal claim) (quoting Eckstein v. Balcor Film Invs., 8 F.3d 1121, 1126 (7th Cir. 1993)). In accordance with our aforementioned law of the circuit doctrine, Alexandre would have needed to furnish binding precedent to induce us to overturn AER Advisors. Here, Alexandre has supplied no caselaw -- neither persuasive, nor binding -- to support her construction of 28 U.S.C. § 1631 as the exclusive basis for a transferee court to apply its own circuit's cases following a § 1404(a) transfer. As such, we could not overturn AER Advisors on these grounds. - 20 - Wickman framework -- rather than the decisional law of the Eleventh Circuit -- namely, the Horton presumption against suicide -- governs Alexandre's federal cause of action under ERISA.