Court Opinion

ID: 8951665
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 08:52:43.568355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:09:58.955955
License: Public Domain

GARZA, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
While I concur in the majority of Judge Hill’s opinion, I join in Judge Garwood’s concurring opinion as to footnote 25 since I do not believe such footnote is necessary to the decision on the issue of forum non conveniens in this case.
I dissent on the issue of allowing plaintiff Pampin to recover for the death of his aunt. While I joined the decision of the panel on this issue, further reflection has caused me to change my view.
The majority seems to think that questions of state law are not worthy of en banc consideration. We, unlike the Supreme Court, do not take a case to pass on only one narrow issue. As the majority concedes, when our court takes a case en banc it vacates the panel’s opinion and judgment. We are therefore free to correct anything that the panel held and resolve any issue left hanging, even though by itself it would not have deserved en banc consideration.
The plaintiff Pampin and his counsel sought the jurisdiction of a federal court sitting in Louisiana in a diversity case. They knew, as the panel and the majority now hold, that Louisiana law would apply. They knew that under Louisiana law plaintiff Pampin could not have recovered for the death of his aunt. Plaintiffs such as Pampin who choose their forum should be held to recover only what that forum can give them under the law of the forum. As thoroughly covered by the majority and the dissent, by choosing Louisiana as the forum plaintiffs were able to get higher awards than they would have gotten in their native Uruguay. By the same token they should have taken the bitter with the sweet and realized that there was no cause of action in Louisiana for recovering for the death of an aunt.
My position is very short and sweet. Once a proper forum is chosen by a plaintiff he must abide by the laws of that forum for all purposes. When a plaintiff chooses the forum he knows what law is available to him in that forum. A court would not then have to indulge in deciding an “interest analysis/most significant relationship” approach to choice-of-law decisions to determine whether or not there is a true or false conflict of interest or adopt the depecage theory. If it had been a Louisiana citizen who lost an aunt in the crash under consideration, he would never be able to recover for the loss of the aunt; *1180no matter what theories of recovery a court could think of, a Louisiana citizen-plaintiff would never ever obtain what plaintiff Pampin did.
My view would bring certainty, predictability, and uniformity of result in accordance with section 6(f) of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws and would certainly bring about consistent determination and application of the law to be applied as per section 6(g) of the Restatement. I probably will be a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but I believe that my approach of telling a plaintiff that once he chooses a forum and it is decided that the law of that forum will control, he is choosing his forum with his eyes wide open knowing what he can and cannot recover under the law of that forum.
I therefore dissent in allowing Pampin to collect damages for the death of his aunt in a court sitting in Louisiana.