Opinion ID: 763468
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Weight of the Authority

Text: 40 To predict how the Delaware Supreme Court would decide this case, we must consider reliable data tending convincingly to show how the highest court in the state would decide the issue at hand. McKenna v. Ortho Pharm. Corp., 622 F.2d 657, 663 (3d Cir.1980). This includes relevant state precedents, analogous decisions, considered dicta, [and] scholarly works. Id. Having reviewed the relevant precedent, it is difficult to predict how the Delaware Supreme Court would decide the issue before us. Importantly, we can discern no appreciable trend among the cases. First, the universe of cases that examines language identical to definition 10(c) is very small. While our job is not simply to count the number of cases on both sides, even if we did so, the line of cases on each side would be roughly equal. Moreover, one Circuit Court of Appeal has weighed in on each side of the issue, and each time only in dicta. Still other cases offered only bare-boned analyses. And finally, with particular relevance to our task, not one of the cases cited is from a Delaware state court or a federal court construing Delaware law. 41 The most we can glean from the conflicting case law on this issue is that, as a starting point, definition 10(c) may reasonably be susceptible to more than one interpretation. When faced with a similar situation in another case, we explained that 42 [a]lthough the presence of conflicting judicial decisions does not automatically mandate a finding of ambiguity, we think it has some relevance.... We are confronted here with two lines of contrasting cases ... While it is our responsibility to ascertain which of these lines is most likely to be followed in Delaware, we cannot help but view such a division as at least suggesting that the ... [contested term] is susceptible of more than one reasonable definition. 43 New Castle v. Hartford I, 933 F.2d at 1196. In short, that different courts have arrived at conflicting interpretations of the policy is strongly indicative of th[is] policy's essential ambiguity. Little v. MGIC Indem. Corp., 836 F.2d 789, 796 (3d Cir.1987) (citation omitted). Thus, as a starting point, we tend to view the case law as indicating that definition 10(c) is susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation and, as such, is ambiguous. For greater guidance on this issue, we now turn to the traditional rules of contract interpretation.