Court Opinion

ID: 9453246
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:07:52.279064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:34.776845
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(concurring and dissenting):
I concur with no reservations in the overruling of Kaiser’s petition for rehearing. With like conviction I respectfully dissent from the denial of the motion to abstain pending State Court determination. This seeming contradiction perhaps deserves some elaboration.
First, on the correctness of the opinion constructed for the Court by the Chief Judge I have no misgivings. With the materials which we have — and which have been worked on, poured over, reworked, and reargued countless times in briefs, replys, rejoinders and motions— the conclusion reached certainly appears to be a permissible and probably the correct one. But that is not the equivalent of saying that the result announced here is what the Supreme Court of New Mexico would now declare. The Erie-lights are here dim, very dim. For all acknowledge that never before has the Supreme Court of New Mexico been invited to go down, find, locate, follow, or mark the path of the right of a private party to condemn private property over which to transport water to be used for mining purposes,1 and if not dim, they shine both ways if not all ways.2 But the Court is the first to recognize that although the controversy comes to us as an ordinary run of the mine private diversity suit, it is overcharged with the most fundamental of major public policies to New Mexico. Phrased with characteristic judicial understatement, the Court sounds this awareness at the outset of its analysis. “Undoubtedly,” the Court states, “the decision in this case must necessarily have a far reaching effect.”
The stakes are high and the consequences portentous. Water, that vital natural resource, cuts a big figure in the economy, the official outlook of the state, and the jurisprudence of New Mexico. At least so far as federal constitutional aspects are concerned, the choice to be made is that for New Mexico alone. With the sketchy materials at hand, how can we say that it is the end use, the “ultimate use,” that must confer the public benefit? And, even if there is really a choice between the alternatives phrased by the Court — a thing which I most earnestly doubt since the same problem is inherent in any effort to state it in terms of alternative or exclusionary categories — how are we to say that New Mexico declares that the use of water for irrigation will be “beneficial” to the public whereas the use of it as an indispensable requirement for the operation of an industrial enterprise would not be? True it is that if — as the Court holds — the public use is confined *263to the traditional one of irrigation m an arid country, there are less disturbing implications of a sociological, political, or economic nature. But Federal Judges — at least in these days — do not have the Keys to the Kingdom to determine for a sovereign state the internal domestic policies which it desires to follow.
In our modem complex economic structure, government — state and local— no longer confines its bounty to the traditional rural or agricultural objects. Nowadays there is open, frank recognition that business — yes, big business— is both legitimate, wholesome and very, very much desired. Thus we see state after state, city after city, operating within the limits of officially declared policy, seeking out industry beyond the borders of the state under aggressive programs of solicitation with the high hopes that some industrial enterprise can be persuaded to relocate within the pursuer’s boundaries. The process in the typical legislative structure is something a good deal more complex than simple, high-pressure salesmanship. Invariably it turns on state-authorized benefits, tax remissions, rental inducements and the like. And what is important here is that any such state-supported, state-authorized benefits inevitably fall upon members of the public and the cost is borne by property subject to taxation.
If — and the if today doesn’t seem to be very great — property can fairly be taxed equitably and ratably to finance such economic inducements to business and industrial enterprise then it seems to me that subjecting private property to the prospect of condemnation at the hands of a private party is but a variation in the form of that burden. And probably, there is no burden at all since the taking requires just compensation.
From the standpoint of the economy of a city, a county, an area, or the whole state of New Mexico, a huge industrial enterprise such as the coal mining operation here involved may well be thought by the state to transcend either the value of the use of the water for traditional agricultural purposes 3 or the unsettling impact of a legislative policy allowing private parties under limited circumstances to exercise eminent domain over private property to transport water for use in further private activity.
With the stakes so high, the guiding materials so equivocal, the choice so wide open and the consequences one way or the other so devastating, what does good judicial administration suggest ought to be done ? One thing it suggests is that we ought not to be doctrinaire either expressly or silently. Thus, Meredith v. City of Winter Haven, 1943, 320 U.S. 228, 64 S.Ct. 7, 88 L.Ed. 9, is not, as so often supposed, an absolute that under every and all circumstances a federal court in a diversity case has to plow through without calling on the state tribunals for aid in the divination of serious and troublesome state problems. Too much has gone on — -indeed too much water has gone over the dam— for any such reading to be compelled. Putting to one side Thibodaux,4 in which *264the Court of Appeals was reversed for failure to abstain for state court determination in a diversity ease, the Supreme Court’s repeated use of the Florida Clay type certification procedure demonstrates that the policy reflected in Winter Haven is not a road block. It is simply one of the factors to be assayed. Starting with Clay5 the Supreme Court not less than three times has exploited fully the Florida procedure.6
To me the sound approach continues to be the one reflected in the unreversed action of the Court in Delaney,7 And experience since that time continues to bear out the strong note sounded by the concurring opinion8 that real injustice is done to litigants and, worse, more damage is done to the states’ jurisprudence and its policies by a headstrong, resolute, inflexible determination on the part of a federal court to barge ahead in a sort of ascetic, misguided Winter Haven impulse, than will likely result from the slight delay occasioned by invoking state adjudication of the controlling issues.9 For the simple fact is that more and more,10 more federal courts are being overruled by more state courts on local issues upon which such federal courts have undertaken to read the Erie signs in the quest of the Winter Haven grail.
Texas, for example, continues on its path of independence in a number of instances11 not the least of which was *265the Fifth Circuit’s Delaney prediction itself.12 But, this is not an infirmity of the Fifth Circuit alone.13 And the experience in Florida demonstrates that state court reversals of Federal appellate decisions occur both in appeals of state cases14 and on Clay certification (see note 5 supra) to the Supreme Court of Florida, the latter with some spectacular results.15 For that matter, this Court has seen and felt first hand the independence of one of its states over the strong protest that for a uniform oil lease clause in a routine contract dispute its declarations for Kansas would simply have to do for Oklahoma as well.16
Of course, having concurred in the opinion and in the denial of rehearing, I necessarily embrace without reserva*266tions the Chief Judge’s statement that “we will, however, comment to the extent that if Kaiser had followed the intricately detailed New Mexico statutory procedure for acquiring land by condemnation, the issues presented and decided here could have been litigated in an orderly manner in the courts of New Mexico where they belong.” p. 262. If we were not dealing with, indeed perhaps coming dangerously close to trifling or meddling with serious matters of great public moment and importance to New Mexico, I would be quite willing to breathe some life into that remonstrance to say to Kaiser that having chosen this awkard device it must live with the consequences of a Federal Court diversity determination with all its perils, its pitfalls, and the possibility of its being wrong. But the real peril of this decision is that the victim is in no real sense either party to the cause. The one suffering is the State and its carefully nurtured, domestically contrived public policy.17 Similarily, the fact that the motion is now made after the adverse decision of this Court, while a powerful circumstance in many situations, does not prevent the exercise of abstention now in view of these great public stakes.18
We know one thing for a certainty: the New Mexico “law” on this point is not settled by this case. Denying one of these parties the chance to get a determination now by the only Court which can authoritatively speak brings about one of those curious aberrations of the law in which the only party ultimately hurt is the one who happens to lose the particular case since all others will soon be protected.19 For the Supreme Court of New Mexico is sure to speak and I would predict that it will speak soon, although I do not know which way it will speak. But considering the difficulty, if not the impossibility of a private litigant securing effective relief from a now already overburdened United States Supreme Court or releasing this Court from the impact of this decision as a matter of stare decisis,20 about the only virture an immediate decision has *267is' that it is done. It is done now and delay is avoided. Delay, to be sure, is a thing we all strive to avoid and overcome. But what else is served? Is there any virtue in decision now simply for the sake of decision if — and that if is a, very big one — the public importance of the question is certain soon to drive other litigants to the New Mexico Courts where the outcome may well be quite different? But different or not, authoritative decision will be made for the first time.
In the look back — even in the eyes of the pedagogical purists — about the only virtue it will have is that someone did his duty in the Winter Haven sense.21 In the meantime, of course, Kaiser and Ranch know their rights. But no one else, and certainly not New Mexico, knows. Nor will they until New Mexico speaks. Why not listen ?

. Thus the Court states: “It is conceded that this precise question of industrial use of public waters has never been presented to the New Mexico courts.” p. 259.

. The opinion continues: “Both Ranch and Kaiser rely upon the same New Mexico cases * * *, each contending for a different interpretation. The case law is not decisive * * p. 259.

. Ultimate “private” use is a shibboleth. For it is conceded that a New Mexico farmer or rancher having water rights can exercise eminent domain to permit transportation of such water over intervening lands owned by others even though when finally on his land the waters will be used in the irrigation of crops or the raising of livestock on which he hopes to, and undoubtedly will, reap great profits in the private enterprise of a farmer.

. Louisiana Power & Light Co. v. City of Thibodaux, 1959, 360 U.S. 25, 79 S.Ct. 1070, 3 L.Ed.2d 1058. There, reversing the Fifth Circuit, the Court stated: “Informed local courts may find meaning not discernible to the outsider. The consequence of allowing this to come to pass would be that this case would be the only case in which the Louisiana statute is construed as we would construe it, whereas the rights of all other litigants would be thereafter governed by a decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana quite different from ours.” Id. at 30, 79 S.Ct. at 1073, 3 L.Ed.2d at 1063.
See also Leiter Minerals, Inc. v. United States, 1957, 352 U.S. 220, 77 S.Ct. 287, 1 L.Ed.2d 267: “[W]e think it ad*264visable to have an interpretation, if possible, of tbe state statute by the only court that can interpret the statute with finality, the Louisiana Supreme Court. The Louisiana declaratory judgment procedure appears available to secure such an interpretation * * * and the United States may of course appear to urge its interpretation of the statute. Id. at 229, 77 S.Ct. at 293, 1 L.Ed.2d at 275.

. Clay v. Sun Ins. Office, Ltd., 1960, 363 U.S. 207, 80 S.Ct. 1222, 4 L.Ed.2d 1170, on certification upon remand, Fla., 1961, 133 So.2d 735, on receipt of answers to certification, 5 Cir., 1963, 319 F.2d 505, rev’d, 1964, 377 U.S. 179, 84 S.Ct. 1197, 12 L.Ed.2d 229.

. In addition to Clay, the other two cases are Aldrich v. Aldrich, 1963, 375 U.S. 249, 84 S.Ct. 305, 11 L.Ed.2d 304, and Dresner v. City of Tallahassee, 1963, 375 U.S. 136, 84 S.Ct. 235, 11 L.Ed.2d 208. Useful as Clay certification is to the Supreme Court and to the Fifth Circuit its use is reserved to important questions. Run-of-the-mine cases with little recurring public importance are routinely given the Brie treatment. See, e. g., Motor Vehicle Cas. Co. v. Atlantic Nat’l Ins. Co., 5 Cir., 1967, 374 F.2d 601; Greer v. Associated Indem. Corp., 5 Cir., 1967, 371 F.2d 29; Hamilton v. Maryland Cas. Co., 5 Cir., 1966, 368 F.2d 768.

. United Services Life Ins. Co. v. Delaney, 5 Cir., 328 F.2d 483 (en banc), cert, denied, 1964, 377 U.S. 935, 84 S.Ct. 1335, 12 L.Ed.2d 298, on motion for rehearing en banc, 5 Cir., 358 F.2d 714, cert, denied, 1966, 385 U.S. 846, 87 S.Ct. 39, 17 L.Ed.2d 77.

. See United Services Life Ins. Co. v. Delaney, supra, 328 F.2d at 485 (concurring opinion). The Delaney abstention procedure and the justification for it sought to be articulated by the concurring opinion have come in for some spirited criticism. See Agata, Delaney, Diversity, and Delay: Abstention or Abdication?, 4 Houston L.Rev. 422 (1966) (Special Fifth Circuit Issue).

. Subsequent Delaney judicial events in neither the Texas State Courts nor the Fifth Circuit (traced in note 5, Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Barnes, 5 Cir., 1966, 361 F.2d 685, 687) prove that when employed with a little enlightened resourcefulness on the part of either counsel, trial court, or appellate court the Delaney abstention is unworkable or administratively unsound. It is safe to say that no one on the Fifth Circuit, majority or dissenting, entertained for the briefest fraction of a possible division of a moment the idea that on recourse to the state courts after remand either counsel or the Texas courts would suppose that the single critical issue be excised for a sort of law-school academic inquiry in the declaratory judgment proceeding.

. In the score sheet which follows (notes 11, 12, 13 and 14 infra), I do not repeat the cases documented in Delaney.

. See, e. g., Felmont Oil Corp. v. Pan-American Pet. Corp., Tex.Civ.App., 1960, 334 S.W.2d 449, error ref’d n. r. e., which expressly refuses to follow Sinclair Oil & Gas Co. v. Masterson, 5 Cir., 1959, 271 F.2d 310; see E. Brown, Law of Oil & Gas Leases, 1958: 1966 Cumulative Supplement, p. 293; Weymouth v. Colorado Interstate Gas Co., 5 Cir., 1966, 367 F.2d 84,102 n. 57.

. Prof. Agata points this out. “Additionally and ironically, Judge Brown can now add Delaney to the list of wrong guesses. Concluding that ‘judicial statesmanship of the highest and proper order’ dictated permitting Texas courts to decide the legal issue, and noting that Texas ‘has a judicial system which will permit adjudication with dispatch and speed’ and ‘with its full arsenal of procedural devices * * * -win enable the parties to have a prompt and completely sufficient determination,’ Judge Brown and his colleagues had again failed to anticipate the state court ruling. Texas refused to hear the case.” (Citing United Services Life Ins. Co. v. Delaney, Tex.Civ.App., 386 S.W.2d 648, aff’d., Tex., 1965, 396 S.W.2d 855). Agata, supra note 7, at 424.

. See Yarrington v. Thornburg, Del., 1964, 205 A.2d 1, 11 A.L.R.3d 1110, rejecting Truitt v. Gaines, D.Del., 1961, 199 F.Supp. 143; Travelers Ins. Co. v. Auto-Owners (Mut.) Ins. Co., 1964, 1 Ohio App.2d 65, 203 N.E.2d 846, rejecting American Fid. & Cas. Co. v. Indemnity Ins. Co. of North America, 6 Cir., 1962, 308 F.2d 697, Kelly v. State Auto Ins. Ass’n, 6 Cir., 1961, 288 F.2d 734, and Travelers Ins. Co. v. Ohio Farmers Indem. Co., 6 Cir., 1958, 262 F.2d 132.

. Weed v. Bilbrey, Fla.App., 2d Dist., 1967, 201 So.2d 771, rejecting outright Emerson v. Holloway Concrete Prods. Co., 5 Cir., 1960, 282 F.2d 271, cert, denied, 1961, 364 U.S. 941, 81 S.Ct. 459, 5 L.Ed.2d 372, and expressly adopting the dissent of Brown, J., in the Emerson case, 282 F.2d at 278.

. See, e. g., Life Ins. Co. of Va. v. Shif-flet, 5 Cir., 1966, 359 F.2d 501, upholding a jury verdict against the insurance company under the construction of the Florida Insurance Statutes on fraudulent misrepresentation. But then see, 5 Cir., 1967, 370 F.2d 555, granting a motion for rehearing and certifying the question to the Supreme Court of Florida, which in Life Ins. Co. of Va. v. Shifflet, Fla., 1967, 201 So.2d 715, reached a result opposite from the one reached in the original Fifth Circuit opinion. On receipt of the answer to the certified question, the Fifth Circuit vacated the earlier judgment and remanded the case to the district court. See 380 F.2d 375.
And see especially Hopkins v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 5 Cir., 1966, 358 F.2d 347 in which the Court certified to the Supreme Court of Florida the controlling question of the dollar limitation on damages for wrongful death, a problem presenting fundamental and serious questions of state policy with only fragmentary case materials with which to work. The determination of the question was so difficult, not only for the Federal Court in the light of intervening developments in the law of conflicts but also for the Supreme Court of Florida, that it resulted actually in two opinions before the question was settled. See the opinion at 201 So.2d 743 holding that the situs state dollar limitation was contrary to Florida policy and the opinion at 201 So.2d 749 where, on rehearing, the Court reversed itself to validate the Illinois recovery limitation. No amount of prescience, including that thought by some to come from a Federal Commission, enables a non-Florida Judge authoritatively to determine Florida policy.

. See Williams, The Role of Federal Courts in Diversity Cases Involving Mineral Resources, 13 Kan.L.Rev. 375, 383-4 (1965), discussing the sequel to Rogers v. Westhoma Oil Co., 10 Cir., 1961, 291 F.2d 726. Despite the issuance of mandamus and, through the voice of my Brother Breitenstein, the strong remonstrance against forum shopping — an ugly word which does not mask that very motive for resort to a Federal rather than local court in an Erie case — by this Court in Lutes v. United States District Court, 10 Cir., 306 F.2d 948, on motion for modification, 308 F.2d 574, cert, denied, 1962, 371 U.S. 941, 83 S.Ct. 320, 9 L.Ed.2d 275, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma rejected the Rogers reading of the Pugh clause for Oklahoma. Rist v. Westhoma Oil Co., Okl., 1963, 385 P.2d 791.

. Indeed the Attorney General of New Mexico in the relation of the State Engineer in a motion to appear as amicus curiae in effect urges us on behalf of the State of New Mexico to abstain pending determination by its own Courts of Kaiser’s declaratory judgment suit field October 30, 1967. On behalf of New Mexico the highest law officer asserts its concern and contends that Kaiser, not the Ranch, is correct in the interpretation of this basic New Mexico law. The motion states:
“(2) The state of New Mexico has a vital public concern in the Court’s interpretation and construction of section 75-1-3, * * * in its opinion filed herein October 12, 1967, its interest arising out of the impact of that interpretation of New Mexico law upon the development and distribution of the public waters of the state
It then asserts that the State of New Mexico takes this position on the merits:
“(a) New Mexico law grants the power of eminent domain for the purpose of diverting and conveying water under a valid water right across the lands of others, for application to beneficial use, and the taking of private property for such purposes is a taking for ‘public use’ under the New Mexico law * *

. It has often been granted by an appellate court, including the Supreme Court. See United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Ideal Cement Co., 1962, 369 U.S. 134, 82 S.Ct. 676, 7 L.Ed.2d 623, and numerous other cases. As a mater of fact, by formal memoranda to the District Court, copies of which have now been made available to us, Kaiser made a like motion in the event that Judge Bratton had doubts— which he did not — asking that he remand the parties to the state courts for appropriate declaratory relief.

. “Thus it is that the only person who is hurt is the one who has no effective recourse to correct the error. Cf. Tipton v. Socony Mobil Oil Co., 5th Cir., 1963, 315 F.2d 660, 662, 667 (dissenting opinion), reversed per curiam, 1963, 375 U.S. 34, 84 S.Ct. 1, 11 L.Ed.2d 4.” United Services Life Ins. Co. v. Delaney, supra, 328 F.2d at 487.' (concurring opinion).

. See Atlantis Dev. Corp. v. United States, 5 Cir., 1967, 379 F.2d 818, 828; see also Lincoln Nat’l Life Ins. Co. v. Roosth, 5 Cir., 1962, 306 F.2d 110 (en banc), cert, denied, 372 U.S. 912, 83 S.Ct. 726, 9 L.Ed.2d 720.

. From the standpoint of judicial administration in a substantive sense the outcome brings to mind Judge Friendly’s lamentations “ ‘The compulsion felt by my brothers * * * to reach what seems a palpably unjust result reminds me of Chief Justice Erie’s observation as to the occasional predilection of the best of judges for “a strong decision,” to wit, one “opposed to common sense and to common convenience.” * * *.’ Spanos v. Skouras Theatres Corp., 2 Cir., 1966, 364 F.2d 161, 167.” Lawrence v. United States, 5 Cir., 1967, 378 F.2d 452, 467 n. 44.