Court Opinion

ID: 9481978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:37:02.918085+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:41.794390
License: Public Domain

REYNALDO G. GARZA, Circuit Judge,
dissenting from granting of rehearing.
I dissent from the granting of rehearing in this case not only because I believe that we were right the first time the case was decided, but because I wish to write as to the inference to be drawn from a refusal of the Texas Supreme Court to take a certified question and also to argue that we are deciding a Texas law issue and the majority insists on looking at California law.
As stated by the majority in the granting of the petition for rehearing, we certified the question we had decided to the Supreme Court of Texas in Hotvedt v. Schlumberger, Limited N. V., 925 F.2d 119. The question certified to the Supreme Court of Texas was as follows:
Is the granting of a stay in a California court on the basis of forum non conve-niens equivalent to a dismissal because of lack of jurisdiction in applying § 16.-064 Tex.Civ.Prac. & Rem.Code (Vernon 1986)?
Since no statute controls what is meant when the Supreme Court of a state such as Texas refuses to answer a question certified, what is the inference that we must draw from such refusal?
I suggest that the most logical inference to be drawn is that the Supreme Court of Texas agreed with our original panel opinion that a stay on the basis of forum non conveniens is equivalent to a dismissal because of lack of jurisdiction in applying the Texas saving statute. I cannot believe that if the majority of the Texas Supreme Court justices had thought that our opinion was wrong that they would have allowed it to stand. What the justices of the Texas Supreme Court refused to do, the majority now does. They set themselves up in the shoes of the Texas Supreme Court and now tell us that we were wrong the first time.
My belief that the majority of the justices of the Texas Supreme Court thought that we had decided the question correctly is further strengthened by the law in Texas as decided in Dow Chemical Co. v. Castro Alfaro, 786 S.W.2d 674 (Tex.1990), in which the common law doctrine of forum non conveniens was abolished in eases of the type before us. I have pointed this case out to my colleagues on the panel and they have both informed me that they do not think that this case has anything to do with our case. I have to strongly disagree with them. They insist in applying California law when we are involved with a Texas statute and ought to be applying Texas law. If the California court had been sitting in Texas they could not have done what they did and even though they had jurisdiction, they would not exercise it.
I would have denied the petition for rehearing on the basis that because we did *299not know whether we were right or not, we submitted the precise question by certification to the Supreme Court of the State of Texas and they refused to accept our certification with the resulting inference that we were right in the first place.