Court Opinion

ID: 9453605
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:18:52.575937+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:43.902350
License: Public Domain

JONES, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring).
The judges of the Supreme Court of Florida, or rather a bare majority of them, have told us how, in their opinion, this appeal should be decided. Since we have no better guide to a decision, indeed no other guide, I concur in the affirmance of the judgment of the district court.
It seems to me that some question might be raised as to the soundness of the enthusiastic and emphatic statements in the opinion of this Court concerning the decisive Erie-Tompkins character of the Florida Supreme Court’s declaration of Florida law. A court of original jurisdiction is a judicial tribunal constituted for the purpose of deciding controversies between litigants and rendering judgments which are enforceable by the courts’ processes. Appellate courts are constituted for the purpose of reviewing, at the instance of litigants, the judgments of lesser tribunals, and in so doing, the appellate court determines, applies, and usually declares the reasons which have guided it.
The statements of appellate courts of reasons for their decisions in adjudicating controversies between litigants, especially when such reasons are several times reiterated in successive appeals, are regarded as legal principles under the doctrine of stare decisis. Statements of principle are stare decisis precedents only when they are essential to decision by a court exercising the judicial power of adjudication.
This appeal is from a judgment entered by a United States District Court in an action brought there by Mrs. Hopkins against Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. The district court had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter and power to enter and enforce a judgment. This Court has jurisdiction over the parties and the subject matter and the power to affirm, reverse or modify the judgment brought before it for review on appeal. The Supreme Court of Florida had no jurisdiction over the parties or the subject matter. It had no power to make or enforce any adjudication of the controversy. The cause was not and could not have been adjudicated by it. It entered no judgment and made no decision. It did not have before it the parties or the subject matter, except as the parties voluntarily submitted argument. All that the Florida court had before it was a question posed by this Court, and all the Florida court did or undertook to do was to give its answer. This Court, adopting the Florida court’s answer to the question, affirms the district court’s adjudication. The action of the Florida court was not an adjudication, since only the Federal courts could enter and enforce judgment. Hence, the action of the Florida court was not an exercise of a judicial power. It was, so it seems to me, only the expression of an opinion on the law of Florida by judges well qualified to give an opinion. As such I am glad to accept it. I cannot regard it as res judicata in the cause or as a judicial decision entitled to acceptance under the rule of stare decisis.
The writer of a specially concurring opinion should, I suppose, have some hope that a useful purpose would be served thereby, however vain that hope might be. The purpose here is merely to suggest that the opinion of the Court pretty well demonstrates the desirability of abolishing the diversity jurisdiction of the Federal courts.