Court Opinion

ID: 9795265
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:24:02.686853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:28:25.524333
License: Public Domain

OPALA, V.C.J.,
dissenting from today’s compliance with the request to answer a certified question from a federal court.
I
¶ 1 The court flunks Federalism 101 by boosting its own expertise in federal law above that of a United States court exercising original jurisdiction over the very ease in which the certified legal issue has arisen. Even though I do not dispute the soundness of the court’s legal counsel to the certifying tribunal, I cannot countenance today’s incursion into the orbit of exclusive federal forensic competence. I hence recede from what appears as nothing more than a tender of solicited advice which the recipient tribunal is utterly free to ignore — an exercise in pure supererogation.1 Advisory opinions — those which have no binding impact on a live controversy' — are strongly disapproved by an uninterrupted line of Oklahoma jurisprudence.2
¶2 The court addresses itself today to a pure federal-law question. Preemption of state law by federal law, the subject dealt with in today’s response that appears packaged and disguised as an answer to a state-law query, presents a pure federal-law question.3
¶3 While a state court may in a case properly before it decide federal-law issues (or even claims) that are needed for disposition of a lawsuit,4 the same authority does not obtain when a state court answers a question certified by a federal court.5 In the *1033latter situation it is not jurisdiction6 but rather judicial authority that would be clearly absent and is hence lacking. This is so because the Revised Uniform Certification of Questions of Law [Act]7 authorizes us to answer solely questions of state law.8 An overbroad (or improvident) certification request cannot enlarge this court’s Act-conferred authority and extend its range of permissible answers beyond the tightly circumscribed perimeter of state law.9
¶ 4 The Act is a clear expression of federalism’s present-day teachings.10 It respects the state’s autonomy to declare its own law— constitutional, statutory and unwritten11— for its use in a pending federal-court litigation. But it does not authorize this court to east itself into a role of intrusive and officious volunteer for an impertinent invasion of pure federal judicial decisionmaking process. I would return the certified inquiry to the originating tribunal with an explanation of our inability to act upon its request for an unauthorized advisory opinion on an unmixed question of federal law.
II
RESPONSE TO THE COURT’S CRITIQUE OF THE DISSENT
¶ 5 The court errs as a matter of law when it finds inconsistency between its pronouncement in Delk v. Market American Insurance Co.12 and this dissent. There, the United *1034States court received several state-law answers to meet multiple alternative scenarios that might unfold upon its inquiry into the relationship among eotenants. All of the court’s answers in Delk represent applicable and efficacious state law tendered for the certifying court’s use in a pending federal-court case.
¶ 6 The court's critique of the dissent ignores and hence fails to address directly the critical point in dispute. This point is that judicial testing of state law by federal preemption standards presents for resolution a question of federal law.13

. The term "supererogation” means "the act or process or an instance of performing more than is required by duty or obligation ... [or] more than is necessary to complete an undertaking.” Webstbr's Third New International Dictionary at 2293 (1961). See Patterson v. Beall, 2000 OK 92, 112 n. 3, 19 P.3d 839, 848 (Opala, J„ dissenting).

. Dank v. Benson, 2000 OK 40, ¶ 7, 5 P.3d 1088, 1091; Loffland Bros. Co. v. Overstreet, 1988 OK 60, ¶28, 758 P.2d 813, 819; Underside v. Lathrop, 1982 OK 57, ¶ 9, 645 P.2d 514, 517; City of Shawnee v. Taylor, 1943 OK 11, ¶ 4, 132 P.2d 950, 952.

. The Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the United States Constitution provides Congress with the power to preempt state law. Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 208-09, 105 S.Ct. 1904, 1909-10, 85 L.Ed.2d 206 (1985) (citing Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 6 L.Ed. 23 (1824)). Whether state law is preempted by federal law is a question of federal law. Allis-Chalmers Corp., supra, 471 U.S. at 208-09, 105 S.Ct. at 1909-10; Malone v. White Motor Corp., 435 U.S. 497, 504, 98 S.Ct. 1185, 1190, 55 L.Ed.2d 443 (1978) (quoting Retail Clerks Int’l Ass’n v. Schermerhorn, 375 U.S. 96, 103, 84 S.Ct. 219, 222, 11 L.Ed.2d 179 (1963)). See also Smith Cogeneration Mgmt., Inc. v. Corporation Comm'n, 1993 OK 147, ¶21, 863 P.2d 1227, 1239.

. As U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence teaches, "state courts have inherent authority, and are thus presumptively competent, to adjudicate claims [and issues] arising under the laws of the United States.” Yellow Freight System, Inc. v. Donnelly, 494 U.S. 820, 823, 110 S.Ct. 1566, 1568, 108 L.Ed.2d 834 (1990) (quoting from Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U.S. 455, 458-60, 110 S.Ct. 792, 795, 107 L.Ed.2d 887 (1990)); see also Lewis v. Sac and Fox Tribe of Oklahoma Housing Authority, 1994 OK 20, ¶ 15, 896 P.2d 503, 509-10.

. We function as officious volunteers when answering (under the Revised Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act, 20 O.S.2001 § 1600 et seq.) a federal-law question. Our intrusion into the federal-court process would not offer a binding resolution of an unsettled issue but rather gratuitous advice. On the other hand, when we answer a state-law question, our response becomes binding on the federal court for application in the process of deciding the case for which the question was submitted. Erie R.R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78, 58 S.Ct. 817, 822, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938); Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, 451 U.S. 630, 640, 101 S.Ct. 2061, 2067, 68 L.Ed.2d 500 (1981); Salve Regina v. Russell, 499 U.S. 225, 226-27, 231-34, 111 S.Ct. *10331217, 1218-19, 1221-23, 113 L.Ed.2d 190 (1991).
Officious volunteers are those who introduce themselves into matters which do not concern them and do something which they are neither legally nor ethically bound to do or which is not in pursuance of affording protection to another's interest. In re Estate of Macfarline, 2000 OK 87, ¶25, 14 P.3d 551, 561; Barnett v. Barnett, 1996 OK 60, ¶7, n. 7, 917 P.2d 473 n. 7; Gray v. Holman, 1995 OK 118, ¶ 7, n. 6, 909 P.2d 776, 779 n. 6 (1995).

. "This court needs no explicit grant of jurisdiction to answer certified [state-law] questions from a federal court; such power comes from the United States Constitution's grant of state sovereignty.” Bonner v. Oklahoma Rock Corp., 1993 OK 131, ¶2 n. 3, 863 P.2d 1176, 1178 n. 3.

. 20 O.S.2001 § 1601 et seq.

. The pertinent terms of 20 O.S.2001 § 1602 provide:
Power to Answer. The Supreme Court ... may answer a question of law certified to it by a court of the United States ... if the answer may be determinative of an issue in pending litigation in the certifying court and there is no controlling decision of the Supreme Court ... constitutional provision, or statute of this state.
(emphasis added).
One treatise maintains that it is "clear that a federal court cannot compel a state court to answer questions in the absence of a state procedure.” 17A C. Wright, A. Miller, E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4248, at 160 (2d ed.1988). See also Planned Parenthood Ass'n v. Ashcroft, 462 U.S. 476, 493 n. 21, 103 S.Ct. 2517, 2526, 76 L.Ed.2d 733 (1983).

. See, e.g., Lumbermens Mut. Cas. Co. v. Belleville Industries, Inc., 407 Mass. 675, 555 N.E.2d 568, 574 (1990) (the court states that while it is authorized to consider certified questions from other courts that relate solely to questions of Massachusetts law, it will not offer its "gratuitous services to opine on questions of Federal law.”); Mardirossian v. Paul Revere Life Ins. Co., 376 Md. 640, 831 A.2d 60, 64 (2003) (a question reformulated under the Maryland Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act "must still be one of Maryland law and must properly dispose of the certified question, and the Act does not authorize the Court to resolve ... questions of federal law”, citing Piselli v. 75th Street Medical, 371 Md. 188, 808 A.2d 508, 515 (2002)); Ramos v. Town of Vernon, 254 Conn. 799, 761 A.2d 705, 718 (2000) (the Connecticut Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act "is not designed ... to provide [the Supreme Court] with the ability to review federal questions that are being litigated in the appropriate federal fora”); A.K.H. v. R.C.T., 312 Or. 497, 822 P.2d 135, 137 (1991) (the court’s authority to consider certified questions is statutorily confined to those of state (not federal) law); In re Certified Question, 420 Mich. 51, 359 N.W.2d 513, 516 (1984) (the court declined to answer because “the certified question procedure [had] not been employed to obtain an expression ... of Michigan law ... [but] to obtain a ruling ... on a question of First Amendment federal constitutional law”).

. Bradford R. Clark, Ascertaining the Laws of the Several States: Positivism and Judicial Federalism After Erie, 145 U. Pa. L.Rev. 1459, 1550 (1997) ("Certification is perhaps uniquely suited to further the principles of judicial federalism underlying the Supreme Court's decision in Erie.”).

. For the meaning of "unwritten law" see McCormack v. Oklahoma Pub. Co., 1980 OK 98, ¶ 7, 613 P.2d 737, 740.

. 2003 OK 88, 81 P.3d 629, 2003 WL 22390053.

. Allis-Chalmers Corp., supra note 3, 471 U.S. at 208-09, 105 S.Ct. at 1909-10. When sitting in the exercise of original jurisdiction United States courts possess exclusive competence over federal-law questions. See in this connection Clark v. Mazda Motor Corp., 2003 OK 19, ¶3, 68 P.3d 207, 210 (Opala, V.C.J., concurring); City of Tahlequah v. Lake Region Elec. Co-op., Inc., 2002 OK 2, V 5, 47 P.3d 467, 470.