Court Opinion

ID: 9479311
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:14:20.85711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:56.716085
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
My previous limited concurrence now turns into a dissent.
Henson v. Columbus Bank, 651 F.2d 320 (5th Cir.1981) announced the correct rule of law and one which we ought to have followed. Moreover, in the light of our Holy Rule that one panel does not overrule an earlier panel it is not only persuasive as stare decisis. It is binding as the law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not.
The effort to distinguish this binding precedent is not rationally based. It rests on the theory that in Henson the suit was first filed in the Georgia Federal Court, then later in a Georgia state court, whereas in the instant cases, both cases were filed in a federal court, the first in Louisiana, the second in Mississippi. This effort to alter substantive law by metaphysical wizardry ignores the accepted principle that in diversity matters a federal district court is just another court of the state in which it sits.
In Henson the Georgia state court decision that the case was barred by the statute of limitations was not res judicata in the Georgia federal district court. It was not res judicata, not because of the distinct creations of the two tribunals. Rather, it was because dismissal of a cause of action on limitation grounds in one state does not preclude a plaintiff from maintaining the same cause of action in another state which has a more favorable period of limitations. *821Restatement of Judgments, § 49 Comment (a) (1942).
If Henson is the law — and this panel in the accompanying order denying rehearing does not even begin to impugn it — our instant decision cannot stand. We either give way to Henson or en banc rehearing is inevitably demanded.