Court Opinion

ID: 9445915
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:41:04.035914+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:27.056040
License: Public Domain

FINNEGAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Justice Stone might well have been describing our position as a transitory Supreme Court for Illinois when he wrote for the majority in Meredith v. City of Winter Haven, 1943, 320 U.S. 228, 234, 64 S.Ct. 7, 11, 88 L.Ed. 9, “In the absence of some recognized public policy or defined principle guiding the exercise of the jurisdiction conferred, which would in exceptional cases warrant its non-exercise, it has from the first been deemed to be the duty of the federal courts, if their jurisdiction is properly invoked, to decide questions of state law whenever necessary to the rendition of a judgment * * * (cases collected). When such exceptional circumstances are not present, denial of that opportunity by the federal courts merely because the answers to the questions of state law are difficult or uncertain or have not yet been given by the highest court of the state, would thwart the purpose of the jurisdic*854tional act.” (Emphasis supplied.) See also Preston v. Aetna Life Ins., 7 Cir., 1949, 174 F.2d 10.
We are called upon to make a decision in this diversity of citizenship ease where the law of the State of Illinois is nonexistent. Everyone involved, court and counsel, cheerfully agree we are confronted with a question of local law, only the local law is conspicuous by its absence. Moreover, district judges are assumed to know the local law in their districts and here we reverse the lower court, though I think rightly so. It has been suggested that federal courts be empowered to certify questions of state law to state courts and obtain a response. See Hart and Weehsler, The Federal Courts and The Federal System 632 (1953) and Vestal, The Certified Question of Law, 36 Iowa L.Rev. 629 (1951) concerning Fla.Stat. Ann. §§ 25.031-25.032 “authorizing the Supreme Court of Florida to answer questions certified by federal appellate courts.” Ibid.