Court Opinion

ID: 9480017
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:35:27.851536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:25.803876
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc.
While expenditure of our limited judicial resources in diversity cases is of great concern to me, I am sufficiently disturbed with the decision of the court in this case that I would favor rehearing en banc. This is the second occasion in the last year in which we have remanded a case for new trial after the district judge gave a Missouri Approved Instruction that would be binding on a state court. In the first such case, Bersett v. K-Mart Corp., 869 F.2d 1131 (8th Cir.1989), I also dissented. We have been very clear in stating that district judges in this circuit are not required to give such instructions. Nevertheless, when they do and when the later change in law is not foreseen, I think we err in overturning their decisions. The instruction here was given by a district judge with long experience in the law of the State of Missouri and the instruction given at the time was one that a state court would have been required to give. I would not now hold the instruction to be in error when the Supreme Court of Missouri, long after the trial, and after argument before the panel, changed the law to require that an instruction “hereafter” not be used. I would not use our limited resources to relitigate issues following such a change in the law. *295In my view, the principles of Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460, 85 S.Ct. 1136, 14 L.Ed.2d 8 (1965), are violated by the court’s ruling today. I would grant rehearing en banc.