Court Opinion

ID: 9472436
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:00:04.078087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:56.000490
License: Public Domain

*1513WILLIAM E. DOYLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the conclusion that was reached by Judge Logan in the majority opinion.
The majority opinion correctly concludes that no federal question jurisdiction is present in this case. However, the conclusion is reached after a lengthy and unnecessary discussion of whether federal law should apply to the interpretation of the insurance policy. Even if it were true that federal law should control the interpretation of the contract, that fact alone would be insufficient to establish a federal question giving rise to federal jurisdiction over the case. Ordinarily, state and federal courts have concurrent jurisdiction over matters of federal law. Hathorn v. Lovorn, 457 U.S. 255, 102 S.Ct. 2421, 2428, 72 L.Ed.2d 824 (1982). The fact, then, that federal law may be involved in a state court action does not automatically support the exercise of removal jurisdiction.
It must be remembered that a defendant may only remove a state action to a federal court if the federal court would have had original jurisdiction over that action in the first instance. 28 U-S.C. § 1441. Blue Cross asserts that this court may exercise federal question removal jurisdiction. Its contention, however, must be rejected.
The case at bar is an action to enforce a contract. Thus the action is one that arises under state, rather than federal, law. Blue Cross in essence seeks to raise a federal preemption defense by claiming that federal law rather than state law controls the interpretation of the underlying contract. The alleged federal question does not appear on the face of the plaintiffs well-pleaded complaint. Therefore, we have no jurisdiction to adjudicate this state law cause of action on the basis of the alleged federal defense.
The well-pleaded complaint rule was framed to deal with precisely such a situation .!.. [Sjince 1887 it has been settled law that a case may not be removed to federal court on the basis of a federal defense, including the defense of preemption, even if the defense is anticipated in the plaintiffs complaint, and even if both parties admit that the defense is the only question truly at issue in the case.
Franchise Tax Bd. v. Const. Laborers Vac. Trust, 463 U.S. 1, 103 S.Ct. 2841, 2848, 77 L.Ed.2d 420 (1983); See also Gully v. First Nat’l. Bank, 299 U.S. 109, 57 S.Ct. 96, 81 L.Ed. 70 (1936); Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149, 29 S.Ct. 42, 53 L.Ed. 126 (1908); Tennessee v. Union & Planters’ Bank, 152 U.S. 454, 14 S.Ct. 654, 38 L.Ed. 511 (1894).
In Gully, Justice Cardozo eloquently cautioned against broad definition of federal question jurisdiction, such as that urged by Blue Cross in this case.
If we follow the ascent far enough, countless claims of right can be discovered to have their source or their operative limits in the provisions of a federal statute or in the Constitution itself with its circumambient restrictions upon legislative power. To set bounds to the pursuit, the courts have formulated the distinction between controversies that are basic and those that are collateral, between disputes that are necessary and those that are merely possible. We shall be lost in a maze if we put that compass by.
See generally, C. Wright, The Law of Federal Courts 94-102. Because the arguable federal question appears in this case by way of a defense to simple state law contract claims, there is no basis for the exercise of federal question removal jurisdiction.