Court Opinion

ID: 9428494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:57.431802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.796909
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join, concurring in part and concurring in the result.
I join the Court’s opinion as to Parts I and II, and I concur in the decision to remand this case for further proceedings as *489to the applicability of the rule adopted in Norfolk & Western R. Co. v. Liepelt, 444 U. S. 490 (1980). I write separately because I have reservations about the Court’s expressed intention to apply the Liepelt rule expansively, a ruling I consider unwise and unnecessary to this case in its present posture.
As the Court makes clear, ante, at 488, the Texas Court of Civil Appeals on remand must determine, first, what Louisiana law requires as to this form of instruction, and, second, whether that state rule is “inconsistent” with OCSLA or “other Federal laws.” 43 U. S. C. § 1333 (a)(2). The Court acknowledges, and I agree, that the choice-of-law provision contained in OCSLA creates “[d]oubt,” ante, at 487, as to whether Congress intended state law or' federal law to govern the grant of this instruction. As I understand OCSLA, the purpose of incorporating state law was to permit actions arising on these federal lands to be determined by rules essentially the same as those applicable to actions arising on the bordering state lands. Congress apparently intended to provide a kind of local uniformity of result, regardless of whether the action arose on shelf lands or on neighboring state lands. I would read the statute, thus, to encourage use of state law, and I would permit the state court to weigh, as an initial matter and only if the Louisiana rule differs from the Liepelt rule, whether Congress’ desire for local uniformity outweighs any perceived need, as a matter of federal common law, for the instruction. I do not find it self-evident that Liepelt created a general “federal common-law rule” that so greatly “furthers strong federal policies of fairness and efficiency in litigation of federal claims,” ante, at 486, 487, as to require its application in cases governed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. In my view, this question was not settled in Liepelt, and it remains open for future adjudication.