Court Opinion

ID: 9494931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:50:30.322605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:42.942087
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN F. WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Although I agree that the defendants’ arguments do not prevail, they seem to me a good deal subtler than the majority opinion lets on.
First, the argument for federal jurisdiction is not for all claims in which a plaintiff foreign government has “a sovereign or an economic interest in the outcome,” Maj. Op. at 199, but for a considerably narrower set, ones “where the actions of a foreign government are a direct focus of the litigation.” Defendants’ Br. at 36, quoting Pacheco de Perez v. AT&T, 139 F.3d 1368, 1377 (11th Cir.1998). This is manifested here, defendants argue, by the plaintiff governments’ claim that “their very policy-making — their core governmental decision-making as such — was subverted by an American industry over a period of some 40 years.” Appellants’ Br. at 34. From this the defendants reason that adjudication of the claims will necessarily take the court deep into the evaluation of plaintiff states’ governmental decisionmaking, thereby implicating United States foreign relations and rendering the dispute “inappropriate for state law to control.” Texas Indus. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U.S. 630, 641, 101 S.Ct. 2061, 68 L.Ed.2d 500 (1981).
But it is not clear that these allegedly federal issues satisfy the well-pleaded complaint rule — i.e., the proposition that federal court jurisdiction under § 1331 exists only if the federal issue appears on the face of a properly pleaded complaint. See Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 392, 107 S.Ct. 2425, 96 L.Ed.2d 318 (1987); see also Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149, 152, 29 S.Ct. 42, 53 L.Ed. 126 (1908). Federal issues raised by way of defense do not qualify, see Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern Cal., 463 U.S. 1, 14, 103 S.Ct. 2841, 77 L.Ed.2d 420 (1983); Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58, 63, 107 S.Ct. 1542, 95 L.Ed.2d 55 (1987); Gully v. First Nat. Bank in Meridian, 299 U.S. 109, 112, 57 S.Ct. 96, 81 L.Ed. 70 (1936), yet that appears to be the character of the issues sketched out by defendants. The plaintiffs presumably will portray themselves as completely innocent gulls of the tobacco companies, akin for example to garden-variety medical insurers, and the companies will then respond with evidence impugning the supposed innocence.
The defendants hint at an argument that the present case might fall under the rubric of “complete preemption,” an exception to the well-pleaded complaint doctrine. See Rivet v. Regions Bank of Louisiana, 522 U.S. 470, 475-76, 118 S.Ct. 921, 139 L.Ed.2d 912 (1998). But they do not offer us an analytical basis for extending the complete preemption doctrine beyond the two statutes that the Supreme Court has held effected such a preemption: § 502(a) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act. See, e.g., Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58, 64-67, 107 S.Ct. 1542, 95 L.Ed.2d 55 (1987) (ERISA); Avco Corp. v. Aero Lodge Number 735, International Ass’n of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, 390 U.S. 557, 560-62, 88 S.Ct. 1235, 20 L.Ed.2d 126 *201(1968) (LMRA); see also Anderson v. H&R Block, 287 F.3d 1038, 1040-44 (11th Cir.2002) (discussing well-pleaded complaint and complete preemption doctrines).
Second, defendants argue a still narrower position: that some of plaintiffs’ common law claims, those brought by the foreign governments as parens patriae, even though they are purportedly only under state law, in fact depend on an anterior federal law issue, namely a finding of federal prudential standing. See Defendants’ Br. at 38 & n.**. Although normally of course federal standing doctrines are no part of state common law actions, see Maj. Op. at 199 n.*, defendants point to our decision in Service Employees Int’l Union Health & Welfare Fund v. Philip Morris, Inc., 249 F.3d 1068 (D.C.Cir.2001), in which we treated the parens patriae standing issue as an element of the plaintiffs’ state common law claims, and, in reliance entirely on federal law concepts, found the absence of such standing fatal to the claims. See id. at 1073; see also id. at 1069 (noting complaints’ inclusion of common law claims). But in that case the plaintiffs themselves explicitly invoked parens patriae standing as to all claims, see Appellants’ Opening Br. at 37-38 and Reply Br. at 6-7, Service Employees (No. 00-7093), drawing no distinction between the statutory and common law claims. Thus, the court in Service Employees had no occasion to hold that state common law parens patriae claims by a foreign government inherently include a federal element.