Hulin v. Fibreboard Corp. , 178 F.3d 316 ( 1999 )

REVISED, June 23, 1999
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
For the Fifth Circuit
No. 97-30734
ESTHER B. HULIN, ET AL.
Plaintiffs
SUSAN H. BERRY; THOMAS HULIN; SALLY H. BLANCHARD;
MARY DESSELLE ROMANO; JOSEPH G. HULIN; JANET M. HULIN
Plaintiffs-Appellants;
VERSUS
FIBREBOARD CORPORATION, ET AL.
Defendants
AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANY
Defendant-Appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court
For the Middle District of Louisiana
June 9, 1999
Before DEMOSS, PARKER, and DENNIS, Circuit Judges.
DENNIS, Circuit Judge:
The district court granted the defendants a summary judgment
dismissing the plaintiffs’ diversity products liability actions
based on Louisiana law on the grounds that the decision of the
Supreme Court of Louisiana in Halphen v. Johns-Manville Sales
Corp., 484 So. 2d 110 (La. 1986), does not apply retroactively to
causes of action which arose before the date it was decided,
February 24, 1986. We reverse and remand the case to the district
court for further proceedings. The Louisiana Supreme Court’s
decisions firmly establish the principles that under the state
constitution and the Civil Code, courts do not make law but
interpret and apply law made by the Legislature or derived from
custom. In accord with those principles, the state’s highest court
has held that when it interprets the law in deciding a controversy
between litigants in one case, that decision becomes the
controlling interpretation of state law and must be given full
retroactive effect in all other cases, unless the court declares
otherwise or such application is barred by prescription or res
judicata. Moreover, when the court interprets and applies the
Civil Code in deciding a case, the foregoing general rule of
adjudicative retroactivity is reinforced by civil law doctrine,
under which the court’s decision is considered to be declarative of
what the Civil Code has always meant. The Louisiana Supreme Court
did not limit the retroactive effect of its decision in Halphen, a
case in which it interpreted and applied the Civil Code provisions
of delictual law. Accordingly, under the Erie doctrine, we
conclude that the Louisiana Supreme Court, applying its long-
standing rule, would determine that Halphen applies retroactively,
consistent with principles of res judicata and prescription.
Consequently, Halphen must be given retroactive effect by federal
courts in the same manner.
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I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On January 7, 1986, Esther B. Hulin, Susan H. Berry, Thomas
Hulin, Sally H. Blanchard, Mary H. Deselle, Joseph G. Hulin, and
Janet M. Hulin (“plaintiffs”) filed suit against American Tobacco
Company (“American Tobacco”) and various manufacturers of asbestos-
containing products (“defendants”) alleging that the defendants’
products contributed to the lung cancer and June 3, 1985 death of
Lenes J. Hulin, Jr., husband and father of the plaintiffs. In
their complaint, the plaintiffs sought recovery under the theories
of strict liability, ultrahazardous activities, and negligence.
Six weeks after the complaint was filed, the Louisiana Supreme
Court in Halphen answered the certified question asked by this
federal court of appeals, by interpreting and applying the
Louisiana Civil Code and its jurisprudence thereunder, and
concluding that if plaintiff proves that the product was
unreasonably dangerous per se, i.e., if a reasonable person would
conclude that the danger-in-fact of the product outweighs its
utility, whether because of defective design or another kind of
defect, or unreasonably dangerous in construction or composition,
a manufacturer may be held liable for injuries caused by the
product even though the manufacturer did not know and reasonably
could not have known of the danger. Halphen, 484 So. 2d at 116-17.
On November 23, 1987, the plaintiffs amended their complaint
to add a products liability claim alleging that tobacco is
unreasonably dangerous per se, i.e., because a reasonable person
would conclude that the danger-in-fact of tobacco outweighs its
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utility.
In April 1994, the district court in this case granted
American Tobacco’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed all of
the plaintiffs’ claims except their allegation that the defendants’
products were unreasonably dangerous per se. On July 29, 1996,
American Tobacco filed a motion in limine to determine the
applicability of Halphen to this suit. On December 9, 1996, the
district court issued its Ruling on Motion in Limine To Determine
Applicability of Halphen, declaring that Halphen could not be
applied retroactively to this case. In a separate ruling on that
date, the court granted American Tobacco’s motion for summary
judgment and dismissed it from this case after concluding that the
plaintiffs’ sole remaining claim, that the defendants’ products
were unreasonably dangerous per se, was inapplicable in light of
the court’s nonretroactivity ruling. The plaintiffs appealed from
this judgment.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
A district court’s decision of a question of state law is
subject to de novo review by this court. Salve Regina College v.
Russell, 499 U.S. 225, 231 (1991). A summary judgment ruling is
also reviewed de novo, applying the same criteria employed by the
district court. Conkling v. Turner, 18 F.3d 1285, 1295 (5th Cir.
1994).
III. DISCUSSION
A. Federal Courts Must Apply The Law of the State,
Except in Matters Governed By the Federal Constitution
Or By Acts of Congress
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In Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), the
Supreme Court announced the governing principle that was to become
the heart of the Erie doctrine:
Except in matters governed by the Federal
Constitution or by Acts of Congress, the law
to be applied in any case is the law of the
state. And whether the law of the state shall
be declared by its Legislature in a statute or
by its highest court in a decision is not a
matter of federal concern. There is no
federal general common law. Congress has no
power to declare substantive rules of common
law applicable in a state whether they be
local in their nature or “general,” be they
commercial law or a part of the law of torts.
And no clause in the Constitution purports to
confer such a power upon the federal courts.
Id. at 78.
The Court has stated that, in determining the content of the
state law to be applied:
the underlying substantive rule involved is
based on state law and the State’s highest
court is the best authority on its own law.
If there be no decision by that court then
federal authorities must apply what they find
to be the state law after giving “proper
regard” to relevant rulings of other courts of
the State.
Commissioner v. Estate of Bosch, 387 U.S. 456, 465 (1967); see also
id. at 477 (“[A]bsent a recent judgment of the State’s highest
court, state cases are only data from which the law must be
derived. . . .” (Harlan, J., joined by Fortas, J., dissenting)).
See, e.g., Jackson v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 781 F.2d 394,
397-98 (5th Cir.) (en banc) (In filling a void in state law the
federal court may not do merely what it thinks best, but rather
must do what it thinks the state’s highest court would deem best.),
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cert. denied, 478 U.S. 1022 (1986); Rogers v. Corrosion Prods.,
Inc., 42 F.3d 292, 295 (5th Cir.) (Although “[t]he decisions of
lower state courts should be given some weight, . . . they are not
controlling where the highest state court has not spoken on the
subject.”), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1160 (1995); Roginsky v.
Richardson-Merrell, Inc., 378 F.2d 832, 851 (2d Cir. 1967) (“[W]hen
a federal court must determine state law, it should not slavishly
follow lower or even upper court decisions but ought to consider
all the data the highest court of the state would use.”); 19 CHARLES
ALAN WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 4507, at 124 (2d ed.
1996) (“[A] responsible determination of state law involves
something more than checking the digests for state court decisions
on point[.]”); 19 WRIGHT ET AL., supra at 126-30 (“[T]he federal
court must determine issues of state law as it believes the highest
court of the state would determine them, not necessarily (although
usually this will be the case) as they have been decided by other
state courts in the past.”); 19 WRIGHT ET AL., supra at 157 (“Thus,
intermediate appellate court decisions may be disregarded if the
federal court is convinced by other persuasive data that the
highest court of the forum state would decide the matter in a
different fashion.” (citing, e.g., Industrial Indem. Co. v. Chapman
and Cutler, 22 F.3d 1346, 1355 n.18 (5th Cir. 1994); Eljer Mfg.,
Inc. v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 972 F.2d 805, 814 (7th Cir. 1992),
cert. denied, 507 U.S. 1005 (1993))). See also ERWIN CHEMERINSKY,
FEDERAL JURISDICTION § 5.3, at 325 (3d ed. 1999) (“In other words, a
federal court in a diversity case is to apply the law the state’s
6
highest court likely would apply. The federal court should
consider lower state court decisions, but is not bound to apply and
follow them if the federal court believes that they would not be
affirmed by that state’s highest court. The federal court may
consider all available material in deciding what law would be
followed by a state.”).
B. Louisiana Judicial Retroactivity Doctrine
Declared By The State’s Highest Court And Derived
From Civil, Common, and Constitutional Law Sources
Louisiana jurisprudential principles, doctrines, and
traditions are derived from Anglo-American constitutional and
common law models, as well as European civil law sources.
Louisiana courts adhere to and apply the same constitutional
principles of separation of powers, justiciability, case or
controversy, and equal protection of laws as the federal and other
state courts. Under Louisiana’s Constitution, the power to make
substantive laws is vested exclusively in the legislature. Under
the State’s constitution and Civil Code, Louisiana courts cannot
make law but are bound to decide cases according to their best
understanding of the law established by legislation and custom.
The overwhelmingly prevalent norm in Louisiana, as in the common
law, the federal courts, and civil law jurisdictions, is that
judicial decisions must be applied retroactively.
In accordance with that authoritative standard, the Supreme
Court of Louisiana has declared that the general rule is that,
unless a judicial decision specifies otherwise, it is to be given
both retrospective and prospective effect. Succession of Clivens,
7
426 So. 2d 585, 587, 594 (La. 1983) (on original hearing and
rehearing); Harlaux v. Harlaux, 426 So. 2d 602, 604 (La.), cert.
denied, 464 U.S. 816 (1983). Fifty years earlier the same court in
Norton v. Crescent City Ice Manufacturing Co., 150 So. 855 (La.
1933), applied substantially the same rule:
The law as construed in an overruled case is
considered as though it had never existed, and
the law as construed in the last case is
considered as though it has always been the
law. As a general rule, the law as construed
in the last decision operates both
prospectively and retrospectively, except that
it will not be permitted to disturb vested
rights.
Id. at 858. See also Construction Materials, Inc. v. American
Fidelity Fire Ins. Co., 388 So. 2d 365, 367 (La. 1980) (“‘[T]he
decisions of a court of last resort are not the law, but only the
evidence of what the court thinks is the law.’” (quoting Norton,
150 So. at 858)); Jackson v. Doe, 296 So. 2d 323, 323 (La. 1974)
(“Prospective [only] application of judicial decisions is the
exception rather than the general rule of law.” (rejecting argument
that Garlington v. Kingsley, 289 So. 2d 88 (La. 1974), overruling
doctrine of charitable immunity, should operate prospectively
only.)); Jackson, 296 So. 2d at 323 (“Prospective [only]
application of judicial decisions is legislating.” (Summers, J.,
concurring)); Charles v. United States, 15 F.3d 400, 402 n.4 (5th
Cir. 1994) (“‘Generally, [under Louisiana law] unless a decision
specifies otherwise, it is given both retrospective and prospective
effect.’” (quoting Succession of Clivens, 426 So. 2d at 587));
Hutson v. Madison Parish Police Jury, 496 So. 2d 360, 369 (La. App.
8
2d Cir.), writ denied, 498 So. 2d 758 (La. 1986) (same); McLaughlin
v. Herman & Herman, 729 F.2d 331, 334 (5th Cir. 1984) (a diversity
case finding that the rule of two Louisiana state court decisions
“is within the general rule, rather than the exception, and
therefore should be applied prospectively and retroactively”).
The legislative power of the State of Louisiana is vested in
the Legislature. LA. CONST. art. III, § 1. Except as expressly
provided by the constitution, no other branch of government, nor
any person holding office in one of them, may exercise the
legislative power. Id. art. II, §§ 1, 2. See Board of Comm’rs of
the Orleans Levee Dist. v. Department of Natural Resources, 496 So.
2d 281, 286 (La. 1986).
Under the Louisiana Civil Code, legislation and custom are the
only authoritative sources of law. LA. CIV. CODE art. 1; A.N.
YIANNOPOULOS, CIVIL LAW SYSTEM 117 (2d ed. 1999). Jurisprudence,
doctrine, conventional usages, and equity are merely persuasive
sources of law. YIANNOPOULOS, supra at 117. Hence, the Louisiana
Supreme Court consistently has held that judicial decisions
interpreting and applying the provisions of the Civil Code operate
both retroactively and prospectively because they “are not the law,
but only the evidence of what the court thinks is the law.”
Norton, 150 So. at 858; Construction Materials, 388 So. 2d at 367(quoting Norton); see YIANNOPOULOS, supra at 199.
In Louisiana and other civil law jurisdictions, the judicial
method of applying Civil Code principles by analogy to facts
unforeseen by the Code always has been used and considered as
9
judicial interpretation of law and not law making. See Ardoin v.
Hartford Accident and Indem. Co., 360 So. 2d 1331, 1334 (La. 1978);
Langlois v. Allied Chem. Corp., 249 So. 2d 133 (La. 1971);
Ferdinand Fairfax Stone, Tort Doctrine in Louisiana: The Materials
For the Decision of a Case, 17 TUL. L. REV. 159, 213 (1942); Joe W.
Sanders, The “Civil Law” in the Supreme Court of Louisiana, 15 LA.
B.J. 15 (1967); Clarence J. Morrow, Louisiana Blueprint: Civilian
Codification and Legal Method For State and Nation, 17 TUL. L. REV.
537, 552 (1943). See also PHILIPP HECK, JURISPRUDENCE OF INTERESTS: AN
OUTLINE, IN THE JURISPRUDENCE OF INTERESTS 41 (M. Magdalena Schoch trans.,
1948); FRANCOIS GÉNY, MÉTHODE D’INTERPRÉTATION ET SOURCES EN DROIT PRIVÉ POSITIF
§§ 107, 165, 166 (La. State Law Inst. trans., 2d ed. 1954). For
example, the Louisiana Supreme Court in Frazier v. Harper, 600 So.
2d 59, 62-63 (La. 1992), held that its prior decisions in Sims v.
Sims, 358 So. 2d 919 (La. 1978), and T.L. James & Co. v.
Montgomery, 332 So. 2d 834 (La. 1976), could not be limited to
prospective application because the court in those cases
interpreted Civil Code Article 2402 (1870), and other community
property principles, to require that an employee’s pension right is
a community asset to the extent that it derives from the employee’s
employment during the marriage. “Consequently, the judicial
decisions . . . did not create law to be applied prospectively but
interpreted principles of legislated law that antedated and
governed the matrimonial regimes” established prior to the Sims and
T.L. James decisions. Id. at 63.
In most cases, however, when the Louisiana Supreme Court
10
interprets and applies Civil Code principles by analogy to cases
unforeseen by the Code, the issue of the temporal effect of the
decision is not raised, because it is so well understood that
whatever the court now holds to be the law of the Civil Code
becomes what has always been the law, even if the new holding
overrules or modifies an earlier decision of the court.1 One
striking example is the Louisiana Supreme Court’s use of the Code
articles relating to servitudes by analogy to develop a complete
body of mineral law to regulate and accommodate property interests
created or affected by the unforeseen phenomenon of oil and gas
production. See, e.g., Frost-Johnson Lumber Co. v. Salling’s
Heirs, 91 So. 207 (La. 1920); Sanders, supra at 22; La. State Law
Inst., Introduction, LA. MINERAL CODE, LA. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 31 et seq.
(West 1989); LA. REV. STAT. ANN. § 31:2 cmt. (West 1989). Other
outstanding instances may be seen in the state supreme court’s
decisions interpreting and applying Civil Code principles by
analogy to recognize a community property right in pension funds;
Sims v. Sims, 358 So. 2d 919 (La. 1978), and T.L. James & Co. v.
Montgomery, 332 So. 2d 834 (La. 1976); and to afford individuals
access to courts for reparation due to injuries caused by marketing
1
Cf. Paul J. Mishkin, Foreword: The High Court, The Great
Writ, And The Due Process of Time and Law, 79 HARV. L. REV. 56, 57
(1965) (“Most likely the [United States Supreme Court’s] failure to
respond in terms, [to pre-Linkletter suggestions that particular
new holdings be given only prospective or limited retroactive
effect], . . . rested on the belief that no answer was really
necessary, that is so ‘obvious’ as to be taken for granted that
whatever the Court now holds to be the law of the Constitution
becomes ‘what has always been the law’ –- even if the new holding
overrules an earlier decision of the Court.”)
11
of unsafe products and by abuses of property rights that expose
society to dangerous things, substances, instrumentalities, or
technology. See, e.g., Weber v. Fidelity & Casualty Ins. Co., 250
So. 2d 754 (La. 1971); Langlois v. Allied Chem. Corp., 249 So. 2d
133 (La. 1971); Loescher v. Parr, 324 So. 2d 441 (La. 1975);
Holland v. Buckley, 305 So. 2d 113 (La. 1974); Craig v. Montelepre
Realty Co., 211 So. 2d 627 (La. 1968); Butler v. Baber, 529 So. 2d
374 (La. 1988); Kent v. Gulf States Utils. Co., 418 So. 2d 493 (La.
1982). The Louisiana judiciary and legal profession consistently
have considered these decisions to be fully retroactive and
prospective generally because they are judicial decisions, rather
than legislation, and in particular because they are considered to
be judicial interpretations of the Civil Code.
What Francois Terré has said with respect to jurisprudence in
French civil law is generally true in the Louisiana and other civil
law systems:
“[A] new jurisprudential rule is always
applied in all new actions, without any
consideration of the date on which the facts
of the action occurred and even when these
facts occurred prior to the change in the
jurisprudence.” That is so for a very simple
reason. When it confers a certain sense on a
[legislative] rule, the jurisprudence becomes
part and parcel of [fait corps avec] that
rule. As a result, this rule is thought to
have always had this signification. More than
retroactive the jurisprudence is, in the image
of interpretative laws, declarative.
FRANCOIS TERRÉ, INTRODUCTION GÉNÉRALE AU DROIT 247 n.228 (4th ed. 1998)
(quoting PAUL ROUBIER, LE DROIT TRANSITOIRE CONFLITS DES LOIS DANS LE TEMPS
24 n.7 (2d ed. 1960)) (Translation by J.R. Trahan, Associate
12
Professor of Law, L.S.U. Paul M. Hebert Law Center).
The technique of applying judicial decisions prospectively but
not retroactively is inconsonant with the basic civil law tenet
that courts interpret but do not make law. “It would certainly be
in violation of Article 5 of the French Civil Code . . . and
incompatible with the ideas of the redactors of the Louisiana Civil
Code.” YIANNOPOULOS, supra at 151. “No attempt has been made in
France or Germany to develop a technique permitting such a
disposition of a case. In view of the position taken by accepted
French and German theory that a decision does nothing more than
dispose of the case before the court, its development would be very
difficult.” ARTHUR TAYLOR VON MEHREN & JAMES RUSSELL GORDLEY, THE CIVIL LAW
SYSTEM 1160 (2d ed. 1977) (footnotes omitted).
In the relatively small number of cases in which the Louisiana
Supreme Court has limited the retroactive effect of its own
decisions, it has expressly done so in the same opinion that
announced the decision. See, e.g., In re Adoption of B.G.S., 556
So. 2d 545, 558 (La. 1990) (limiting retroactive effect of its
decision declaring unconstitutional an adoption statute purporting
to give mother of illegitimate child power to terminate the
father’s parental rights without notice or opportunity to be
heard); Bergeron v. Bergeron, 492 So. 2d 1193, 1200 (La. 1986)
(applying restatement of jurisprudential burden-of-proof rule to
child custody modification cases tried after finality of this
judgment); Lovell v. Lovell, 378 So. 2d 418, 421-22 (La. 1979)
(final alimony judgments would remain intact although they were
13
rendered under a law declared unconstitutional because it provided
alimony for women only); Barnett v. Develle, 289 So. 2d 129, 147-49
(La. 1974) (limited retroactivity of declaration of
unconstitutionality of firemen’s minimum wage statutes); Sumrall v.
J.C. Penny Co., 120 So. 2d 67, 70 (La. 1960) (limiting
retroactivity of interpretation of statute imposing penalties for
non-payment of workers’ compensation). See also Cole v. Celotex
Corp., 599 So. 2d 1058, 1072 (La. 1992) (dictum to the effect that
when retroactive effect of a decision is to be declined the court
clearly has articulated that the principle being announced was one
overturning a firmly entrenched rule).
In Succession of Clivens, 426 So. 2d 585 (La. 1982), some
members of the Louisiana Supreme Court may have entertained the
idea of making the court’s prior decision in Succession of Brown,
388 So. 2d 1151 (La. 1980), apply prospectively only under the
Chevron Oil test, but a majority of the court rejected that notion.
Succession of Clivens, 426 So. 2d at 594 (on rehearing). Instead,
a majority agreed upon the result, but not upon a unified
rationale, in deciding that Succession of Brown applies
retroactively to January 1, 1975, the effective date of the 1974
Louisiana Constitution. The Succession of Brown decision, which
was silent as to its temporal effect, declared Civil Code Article
919, which discriminated against illegitimate children in intestate
successions, unconstitutional as conflicting with Article 1, § 3 of
the 1974 Louisiana Constitution. Because there was no majority
opinion in Succession of Clivens, it is impossible to divine a
14
clearly preponderate rationale for the result of that decision.
The Succession of Clivens result, however, is consistent with an
application of the general rule that, unless the court rendering
the decision states otherwise, its decision applies retroactively.
Because the court in Succession of Brown did not provide otherwise,
its decision should apply retroactively, but its retroactivity must
be limited by an independent overriding rule contained in the 1974
Louisiana Constitution.
It is well established that the effect of even a fully
retroactive jurisprudential decision is limited by certain
independent overriding legal principles. In both civil and common
law systems, the fully retroactive effect of every judicial
decision is barred by independent legal principles of law designed
to place limits on litigation in the interest of legal stability.
In the continental civil law systems, jurists recognize that the
principle of causae finitae –- extinguished actions -– prevents
retroactive legislation or judicial decisions from affecting
litigation that has been terminated by a final judgment, closed by
compromise, or extinguished by prescription. See ROUBIER, supra at
32; PATRICE LEVEL, ESSAI SUR LES CONFLITS DE LOIS DANS LE TEMPS 33 n.19, 161-
62 n.90 (1959) (Translation by Prof. J.R. Trahan); JACQUES GHESTIN &
GILLES GOUBEAUX, TRAITÉ DE DROIT CIVIL: INTRODUCTION GÉNÉRALE 415 n.462 (3d
ed. 1990) (Translation by Prof. J.R. Trahan). That res judicata,
statutes of limitation, and other independent legal principles have
this effect in federal and common law is illustrated by the Supreme
Court’s decisions in James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501
15
U.S. 529 (1991), and Reynoldsville Casket Co. v. Hyde, 514 U.S. 749(1995), discussed in some detail later in this opinion. In
Louisiana, the principles of res judicata and extinguishment of
rights or obligations by prescription limit the retrospective
effect of retroactive legislation. See Chance v. American Honda
Motor Co. Inc., 635 So. 2d 177 (La. 1994) (prescription); Hall v.
Hall, 516 So. 2d 119 (La. 1987) (same); Belanger v. Great Am.
Indem. Co., 188 F.2d 196, 198 (5th Cir. 1951) (Louisiana diversity
case -– res judicata); Petroleum Helicopters, Inc. v. Avco Corp.,
834 F.2d 510, 511 (5th Cir. 1987) (same); Harris v. Jackson, 439
So. 2d 1120, 1121 n.4 (La. App. 1st Cir. 1983), writ denied, 444
So. 2d 1240 (La. 1984) (same). By analogy, although there is a
dearth of jurisprudential discussion on the subject, there would
appear to be a similar bar to the retroactive application of a new
jurisprudential interpretation to actions that have been finally
terminated by judgments or compromises, or extinguished by
prescription. Cf. Succession of Lambert, 28 So. 2d 1, 9 (La.
1946).
An overriding independent legal principle established by
Article 14, § 26 of the 1974 Louisiana Constitution provides that,
subject to exceptions not here pertinent, the constitution is not
retroactive and does not create any right which did not exist under
the previous constitution based upon actions or matters occurring
prior to the effective date of the 1974 constitution. The
acknowledged illegitimate child’s cause of action in Succession of
Brown arose before the 1974 constitution upon the death of her
16
father in 1971. When the 1974 Louisiana Constitution became
effective on January 1, 1975, its new guarantee of equality for
illegitimate children contained in Article 1, § 3 repealed or
rendered unconstitutional Civil Code Article 919, which had denied
such equality, prospectively from that effective date. Because, as
provided by Article 14, § 26, the 1974 Louisiana Constitution
generally did not create new rights retroactively, the court’s
decision in Succession of Brown, recognizing new rights granted
illegitimate children by Article 1, § 3, necessarily was limited in
its retroactive effect to intestate successions opened after the
effective date of the constitution on January 1, 1975.
In the present case, of course, we are not seeking to
determine the “true” reason for the court’s decision in Succession
of Clivens or even to prove that it reached the correct result.
See Katherine Shaw Spaht, Developments in the Law (Successions), 47
LA. L. REV. 471, 471-79 (1986) (suggesting that Succession of Clivens
cannot be reconciled with Trimble v. Gordon, 430 U.S. 762 (1977)).
The discussion is intended merely to demonstrate that it cannot be
said that Succession of Clivens was a departure from or
inconsistent with the Louisiana doctrine of adjudicative
retroactivity.
Additionally, it should be noted that the Louisiana Supreme
Court has established by jurisprudence constante another
independent legal principle in its consistent holdings that, where
an injury has occurred for which the injured party has a cause of
action, that cause of action is a right which is protected by the
17
guarantee of due process. See Soloco, Inc. v. Dupree, 707 So. 2d
12, 16 (La. 1998); Faucheaux v. Alton Ochsner Med. Found. Hosp. &
Clinic, 470 So. 2d 878, 878-79 (La. 1985); Lott v. Haley, 370 So.
2d 521, 524 (La. 1979); Burmaster v. Gravity Drainage Dist. No. 2,
366 So. 2d 1381, 1387 (La. 1978). The court has concluded that
statutes enacted after the acquisition of such a cause of action,
therefore, cannot be retroactively applied so as to divest the
plaintiff of his cause of action because such a retroactive
application would contravene the due process guarantees.
Faucheaux, 470 So. 2d at 878; Lott, 370 So. 2d at 524; Terrebonne
v. South Lafourche Tidal Control Levee Dist., 445 So. 2d 1221,
1224-25 (La. 1984). The same principle, by analogy, appears also
to be applicable to changes to jurisprudential interpretations
brought about through subsequent judicial decrees. Succession of
Lambert, 28 So. 2d at 9.
The Louisiana Supreme Court first recognized a strict products
delictual liability theory of recovery under Louisiana civil law in
Weber v. Fidelity & Casualty Insurance Co., 250 So. 2d 754 (La.
1971). At that time, the Louisiana delictual articles, Civil Code
articles 2315-2322, were virtually identical to those of the French
Civil Code, and contained no literal basis for strict liability
based on defective products. The principal provision, Article
2315, however, stated that, “Every act whatever of man, that causes
damage to another, obliges him by whose fault it happened, to
repair it.” Thus, the principle of fault under the Code is a
dynamic one, the meaning of which the legislature has left to the
18
interpretation of the jurists. See Ardoin v. Hartford Accident &
Indem. Co., 360 So. 2d 1331 (La. 1978); Entrevia v. Hood, 427 So.
2d 1146 (La. 1983); Langlois v. Allied Chemical Corp., 249 So. 2d
133 (1971); GÉNY, supra § 99; MARCEL PLANIOL, 1 TRAITÉ ÉLÉMENTAIRE DE DROIT
CIVIL § 5 (Quasi-Offenses), at 441-47 (La. State Law Inst., trans.,
12th ed. 1939); STONE, LOUISIANA CIVIL LAW TREATISE: TORT DOCTRINE §§ 59,
60 (1977). Negligence and imprudence are not the only constituents
of fault, for the courts, in order to obtain standards of fault,
may advert to other articles of the Code, statutes, regulations,
constitutional provisions, and even to the jurisprudence. See
Ardoin, 360 So. 2d at 1334; Stone, Tort Doctrine in Louisiana,
supra at 213. Accordingly, the Louisiana courts were authorized to
recognize and interpret the strict tort products liability doctrine
by analogy as a kind of fault under Civil Code articles 2315–2322.
See, e.g., DeBattista v. Argonaut-Southwest Ins. Co., 403 So. 2d
26, 30-31 (La. 1981); Bell v. Jet Wheel Blast, 462 So. 2d 166 (La.
1985); Entrevia v. Hood, 427 So. 2d 1146 (La. 1983); Langlois v.
Allied Chemical Corp., 249 So. 2d 133 (La. 1971).
By the mid-1980s, the Louisiana Supreme Court had indentified
and applied a body of products liability principles by analogy
within the framework of the Civil Code which included theories of
recovery for manufacturing defects, risk/utility design defects,
and failures to give adequate warnings. See, e.g., Hunt v. City
Stores, Inc., 387 So. 2d 585 (La. 1980) (applying risk/utility test
for design defect products liability and strict liability under
Civil Code Article 2317); Winterrowd v. Travelers Indem. Co., 462
19
So. 2d 639 (La. 1985) (adequate warning); Hebert v. Brazzel, 403
So. 2d 1242 (La. 1981) (risk/consumer expectation design defect;
adequate warning); DeBattista v. Argonaut-Southwest Ins. Co., 403
So. 2d 26 (La. 1981) (risk/consumer expectation design defect case
comparing strict liability under Civil Code Article 2317); Chappuis
v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 358 So. 2d 926 (La. 1978) (adequate
warning); Weber v. Fidelity & Casualty Ins. Co., 250 So. 2d 754(La. 1971) (manufacturing defect case recognizing that a product
may be defective in design, composition, or manufacture). Along
with the liability theories, the jurisprudence had recognized the
defense of comparative fault. Jet Wheel Blast, 462 So. 2d at 171.
In 1985, this federal court of appeals certified to the
Louisiana Supreme Court the question: May a manufacturer be held
liable for injuries caused by an unreasonably dangerous product if
the manufacturer establishes that it did not know and reasonably
could not have known of the inherent danger posed by its product?
Halphen v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 755 F.2d 393, 394 (5th Cir.
1985) (en banc). Because the general nature of the question called
for an answer based upon a comprehensive review of Louisiana law
and jurisprudence related to products liability, the Louisiana
Supreme Court surveyed the delictual provisions of the Civil Code,
the strict products liability jurisprudence cited above, other
related jurisprudence, see, e.g., Turner v. New Orleans Pub. Serv.,
Inc., 476 So. 2d 800, 806 (La. 1985) (majority and concurring
opinions); Entrevia v. Hood, 427 So. 2d 1146 (La. 1983); Kent v.
Gulf States Utils. Co., 418 So. 2d 493 (La. 1982); Olsen v. Shell
20
Oil Corp., 365 So. 2d 1285 (La. 1978); Loescher v. Parr, 324 So. 2d
441 (La. 1975); Turner v. Bucher, 308 So. 2d 270 (La. 1975);
Holland v. Buckley, 305 So. 2d 113 (La. 1974); Langlois v. Allied
Chemical Corp., 249 So. 2d 133 (La. 1971); Welch v. Outboard Marine
Corp., 481 F.2d 252 (5th Cir. 1973), as well as comparable
decisions by federal and other state courts, and the writings of
recognized leading commentators on products liability law. In an
opinion discussing these authorities, the Halphen court answered
the certified opinion: In a strict products liability case, a
manufacturer may be held liable for injuries caused by an
unreasonably dangerous product, although the manufacturer did not
know and reasonably could not have known of the danger, if the
plaintiff proves that the product was unreasonably dangerous
because: (1) the danger-in-fact of the product, whether foreseeable
or not, outweighed the utility of the product due to its design or
due to the nature of the product per se; or (2) the product was
unreasonably dangerous in construction or composition. Halphen,
484 So. 2d at 115-16.
In reaching its conclusions, the state supreme court in
Halphen applied its previously developed products liability
jurisprudence and, by analogy, as it had done in Hunt and
DeBattista, the principle of legal fault or strict liability under
Civil Code articles 2317-2322. Id. at 116. In its landmark
decision in Loescher v. Parr, 324 So. 2d 441 (La. 1975), the court
had marked the contours of this form of fault and liability
essentially as follows: When harm results from the conduct of a
21
person or defect of a thing which creates an unreasonable risk of
harm to others, a person legally responsible under these Code
articles for the supervision, care, or guardianship of the person
or thing may be held liable for the damage thus caused, despite the
fact that no personal negligent act or inattention on the former’s
part is proved. The injured person must prove the vice (i.e.,
unreasonable risk of injury to another) in the person or thing
whose act causes the damage, and that the damage resulted from this
vice. Once this is proved, the owner or guardian responsible for
the person or thing can escape liability only if he shows the harm
was caused by the fault of the victim, by the fault of a third
person, or by an irresistible force. Halphen, 484 So. 2d at 116
(citing Loescher). Thus, the strict liability or legal fault
arising from the Code provisions was more than a presumption of
negligence. The owner or guardian could not be absolved of
liability even if he proved that he did not know and could not have
known of the unreasonable risk of harm to others. Id. (citing
Loescher (strict liability for damage done by tree with a non-
apparent internal disease under Civil Code Article 2317)); Holland
v. Buckley, 305 So. 2d 113 (La. 1974) (strict liability for pet
dog’s first bite under Civil Code Article 2321); Turner v. Bucher,
308 So. 2d 270 (La. 1975) (strict liability of parent for damage
caused by his child under Civil Code Article 2318); Olsen v. Shell
Oil Corp., 365 So. 2d 1285 (La. 1978) (strict liability of a
building owner for premises defect under Article 2322)).
The Louisiana Supreme Court in Halphen noted that the
22
principle of strict products liability is analogous to the
principle underlying Civil Code articles 2317-2322. Consequently,
after fully describing the similarities, e.g., the custodian and
the manufacturer both are in the best position to control
unreasonable risk to others by the thing or the product, the court
concluded that when a plaintiff proves that a product is badly
defective because it is unreasonably dangerous in construction or
composition, or because its utility is outweighed by its danger-in-
fact due to its design or intrinsic nature, the producer should be
held strictly liable to the innocent consumer regardless of
scientific inability to know or avoid the danger. Otherwise, the
liability of a manufacturer who distributes large numbers of such
unreasonably dangerous products causing multiple injuries and
deaths to innocent consumers would be less strict than that of an
ordinary homeowner for the act or defect of his child, animal, or
tree.2 Halphen, 484 So. 2d at 116-18.
Subsequently, the Louisiana Supreme Court and the Louisiana
courts of appeal have applied the jurisprudential Civil Code
interpretations expressed in Halphen retroactively to a large
2
Subsequent to Halphen, the Louisiana Supreme Court, in Ross
v. La Coste de Monterville, 502 So. 2d 1026 (La. 1987), observed
that, under French law, a manufacturer may be held strictly liable
for the damage done by its defective product, a bottle of lemonade,
after its sale to a consumer, on the theory that the manufacturer
retained the garde of the structure of the product. Id. at 1030
(citing and quoting from Société Commerciale Européenne des
Brasseries “Brasseries de la Meuse” v. Etablissements Boussois-
Souchon-Neuvesel, et al., Cass. 2e civ. ch., June 5, 1971 (quoted
in VON MEHREN ET AL., supra at 676-77)).
23
number of cases.3
Considering the decisions of the Supreme Court of Louisiana
and all pertinent material available, we conclude that the highest
court of the State of Louisiana would continue to consider that its
decision in Halphen v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 484 So. 2d 110(La. 1986), applies retroactively, consistently with the state law
of res judicata and liberative prescription. The Supreme Court of
Louisiana consistently has held that, generally, unless a judicial
decision specifies otherwise, it is to be given both retrospective
and prospective effect. In Halphen, the state supreme court did
3
See, e.g., Toups v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 507 So. 2d 809(La. 1987); Bloxom v. Bloxom, 512 So. 2d 839 (La. 1987); Brown v.
Sears, Roebuck & Co., 514 So. 2d 439 (La. 1987); Reilly v. Dynamic
Exploration, Inc., 571 So. 2d 140 (La. 1990); Guidry v. Frank
Guidry Oil Co., 579 So. 2d 947 (La. 1991), overruled on other
grounds, Gauthier v. O’Brien, 618 So. 2d 825 (La. 1993); Cosse v.
Allen-Bradley Co., 601 So. 2d 1349 (La. 1992); Hines v. Remington
Arms Co., 648 So. 2d 331 (La. 1994); Longo v. E.I. Dupont de
Nemours & Co., 632 So. 2d 1193 (La. App. 4th Cir.), writ denied,
637 So. 2d 464 (La. 1994); Laing v. American Honda Motor Corp., 628
So. 2d 196 (La. App. 2d Cir. 1993), writ denied, 635 So. 2d 239(La. 1994); Sharkey v. Sterling Drug, Inc., 600 So. 2d 701 (La.
App. 1st Cir.), writ denied, 605 So. 2d 1099 (La.), writ denied,
605 So. 2d 1100 (La. 1992); Putnam v. Gulf States Utils. Co., 588
So. 2d 1223 (La. App. 1st Cir. 1991); Berry v. Commercial Union
Ins. Co., 565 So. 2d 487 (La. App. 2d Cir.), writ denied, 569 So.
2d 959 (La. 1990); Traut v. Uniroyal, Inc., 555 So. 2d 655 (La.
App. 4th Cir. 1989); Poirrier v. Trailmobile, Inc., 550 So. 2d 1349(La. App. 4th Cir. 1989), writ denied, 556 So. 2d 58 (La. 1990);
McCoy v. Otis Elevator Co., 546 So. 2d 229 (La. App. 2d Cir.), writ
denied, 551 So. 2d 636 (La. 1989); Addison v. Williams, 546 So. 2d
220 (La. App. 2d Cir.), writ denied, 550 So. 2d 634 (La. 1989);
Antley v. Yamaha Motor Corp., 539 So. 2d 696 (La. App. 3d Cir.
1989); Zumo v. R.T. Vanderbilt Co., 527 So. 2d 1074 (La. App. 1st
Cir. 1988); Prather v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 526 So. 2d 1325(La. App. 3d Cir.), writ denied, 531 So. 2d 272 (La. 1988); Price
v. Corpus Eng’g Assocs., 515 So. 2d 589 (La. App. 1st Cir.), writ
denied, 516 So. 2d 133 (La. 1987); LeBleu v. Homelite Div. of
Textron, Inc., 509 So. 2d 563 (La. App. 3d Cir. 1987); Jurovich v.
Catalanotto, 506 So. 2d 662 (La. App. 5th Cir.), writ denied, 508
So. 2d 87 (La. 1987).
24
not specify that its decision was to be limited in its temporal
application. The Louisiana Supreme Court also has held that a
judicial decision interpreting the Civil Code operates both
retroactively and prospectively, even if it overrules a prior
jurisprudential interpretation, because it is not the law but only
evidence of what the court thinks is the law. These holdings are
consistent with the well-established principles of other civil-law
jurisdictions. Likewise, in Louisiana and other civil-law
jurisdictions, the judicial method of applying Civil Code
principles by analogy to facts not specifically foreseen by the
Code always has been used and considered to be judicial
interpretation of the law and not lawmaking, because the only
authoritative sources of law under the Civil Code are legislation
and custom. In Halphen, the Louisiana Supreme Court applied Civil
Code principles and prior jurisprudential interpretations of those
principles by analogy to a products liability issue that had not
been foreseen by the Code. Moreover, the Louisiana Supreme Court
has established a rule of jurisprudence constante, in a series of
uniform and homogenous rulings, that, where an injury has occurred
for which the injured party has a cause of action, legislation or
judicial decisions cannot be applied retroactively to divest the
plaintiff of his cause of action because it is protected by the
guarantee of due process. Although jurisprudence constante does
not represent legislative force in the proper sense, such as is
attached to legislated law or custom, its long and continuous use
and influence indicate that it is in harmony with the Code and that
25
deviation therefrom would impair the social values protected by the
Code and the precedent series. Because the state and federal
courts in Louisiana already have applied Halphen retroactively to
a large number of cases, a retrospective limitation of its
jurisprudential interpretations to prospective-only application
would violate the principle that similarly situated litigants
should be treated equally. Finally, as noted in the next section
of this opinion, the United States Supreme Court evidently has
returned to the rule of adjudicative retroactivity, ending its
thirty-year experiment with making new jurisprudential rules apply
prospectively on a selective basis and, except perhaps for a very
rare and extraordinary case, purely prospectively. Accordingly,
the persuasive influence that the United States Supreme Court’s
decisions have on state courts with respect to retroactivity
doctrine now will weigh on the side of the rule of adjudicative
retroactivity.
The principal thrust of the district court’s opinion and the
defendant-appellee’s position on appeal is that the Louisiana
Supreme Court’s decision in Halphen made substantive laws, and
that, therefore, those laws must be applied prospectively only as
if they were legislation enacted by the legislature. The argument
is in diametric contradiction with the Louisiana Supreme Court
decisions, the Louisiana Constitution, the Louisiana Civil Code,
and civil law adjudicative retroactivity doctrine.
Under the distribution of powers by the Louisiana Constitution
of 1974, the powers of government of the State are divided into
26
three separate branches. LA. CONST. art. II, § 1. Except for
provisions not applicable in the present case, the constitution
provides that no one of these branches, nor any person holding
office in one of them, shall exercise power belonging to either of
the others. LA. CONST. art. II, § 2. The legislative power of the
State is vested in a legislature, consisting of a Senate and a
House of Representatives. LA. CONST. art. III, § 1. The judicial
power is vested in a supreme court, courts of appeal, district
courts, and other courts authorized by the constitution. LA. CONST.
art. V, § 1. The supreme court may establish procedural and
administrative rules for the judiciary not in conflict with law.
LA. CONST. art. V, § 5(A). Consequently, the Louisiana Supreme
Court does not have the legislative power to make substantive laws
of general application in the nature of legislation. See Orleans
Levee Dist., 496 So. 2d at 286; cf. State ex rel. Lisso v. Police
Jury of Red River Parish, 41 So. 85, 86 (La. 1906) (“[I]t is not,
and cannot, reasonably, be asserted, that the judiciary department
is vested with the slightest shadow of authority in the matter of
making laws; its sole function being to interpret the laws, as
made[.]”).
Consistently with the constitution, and based on its own civil
law tradition, Article 1 of the Louisiana Civil Code provides that
the sources of law are legislation and custom. In other words,
Louisiana judicial decisions are not sources but interpretations of
law.
The district court and the defendant-appellee disregarded the
27
substantial body of Louisiana Supreme Court decisions expressly
holding that under the state constitution and Civil Code, judicial
decisions are not law but the judges’ interpretations of the law,
and that a judicial decision is to be applied retroactively unless
the court rendering it specifies otherwise. They pay no heed to
any of the other authorities contrary to their position, such as
the decisions of the United States Supreme Court and the learned
works of civil- and common-law scholars. Instead, the district
court and the defendant-appellee rely exclusively on a state court
of appeal opinion that uncritically accepts a manufacturer-
defendant’s argument which is based on nothing more than a flawed
syllogism of word-logic.4 The statement in the court of appeal
4
In Young v. Logue, 660 So. 2d 32 (La. App. 4th Cir.), writ
denied, 664 So. 2d 443 (La.), writ denied, 664 So. 2d 444 (La.
1995), the court, without adverting to any of the Louisiana Supreme
Court decisions and other authorities discussing adjudicative
retroactivity, stated:
Clemco correctly points out that in Gilboy v.
American Tobacco Co., 582 So. 2d 1263 (La.
1991), the supreme court opined that Halphen’s
theories of recovery are substantive rights
that cannot be retroactively revoked by the
Act. Thus, according to Clemco, just as
Halphen’s theories of recovery cannot be
denied to a plaintiff whose cause of action
arose prior to the Act, neither can those
theories be applied to cases where the cause
of action arose prior to Halphen in 1986.
We conclude that this is correct.
Id. at 53. The reasoning in Young is faulty at several points.
The Louisiana Supreme Court in Gilboy could not, and, correctly
read, did not purport to transform its prior decision in Halphen
into substantive law. Gilboy merely held that the LPLA was a
substantive law enacted by the legislature that, under Civil Code
Article 6, applied prospectively only because it contained no
contrary legislative expression. Halphen was a judicial
interpretation of the Civil Code, a substantive law enacted by the
legislature, and Halphen applies retroactively because the court in
Halphen did not say otherwise. Thus, it simply does not follow
28
opinion, which was not determinative of the outcome in that case,
should be disregarded because of the other persuasive data that the
Louisiana Supreme Court would decide the matter in a different
fashion. A federal court has a duty to determine state law as it
believes the State’s highest court would. The decision of an
intermediate appellate court may guide, but it is not necessarily
controlling upon, a federal court when determining what the
applicable state law is. FDIC v. Abraham, 137 F.3d 264, 268 (5th
Cir. 1998); Industrial Indem., 22 F.3d at 1355 n.18. Moreover,
“When a federal court of appeals is of the opinion, as we are in
this case, that the district court’s view of the applicable state
law is against the more cogent reasoning of the best and most
widespread authority, it must reverse the judgment of the lower
court.” Stool v. J.C. Penney Co., 404 F.2d 562, 563 (5th Cir.
1968).
C. Background and Recent Developments
Of the United States Supreme Court’s
Retroactivity Doctrine
Although Louisiana judges are called upon to think and act as
civil-law jurists when deciding cases under the Louisiana Civil
Code, at the same time they are judges in the Anglo-American
tradition who are more often engaged in the interpretation and
application of law derived from American state, federal, and other
Louisiana law sources outside the ambit of the Civil Code.
that, because the LPLA is substantive legislation applying
prospectively only, Halphen cannot be a retroactively applicable
judicial interpretation of previously enacted substantive
legislation. Louisiana law and jurisprudence are to the contrary.
29
Consequently, the nature of the entire Louisiana judicial process
is also heavily influenced by common-law traditions, United States
Supreme Court decisions, and the laws and jurisprudence of other
states. The Supreme Court of Louisiana, like courts of other
states, gives careful attention to the United States Supreme
Court’s opinions explaining common-law traditions and
constitutional principles that influence the role of the judiciary
and the temporal effects of judicial decisions. Accordingly, we
must take those opinions into account in our effort to ascertain
the probable course of future developments in the Louisiana
doctrine of retroactivity.
The general principle that statutes operate prospectively and
judicial decisions apply retroactively had been followed by the
common law and the Supreme Court’s decisions “for near a thousand
years.” Kuhn v. Fairmont Coal Co., 215 U.S. 349, 372 (1910)
(Holmes, J., dissenting); see Robinson v. Neil, 409 U.S. 505, 507
(1973); Rivers v. Roadway Express, Inc., 511 U.S. 298, 311-12
(1944).5 The Supreme Court, in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 6185
Justice Scalia, concurring in Harper v. Virginia Department
of Taxation, 509 U.S. 86, 107 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring),
explained the traditional judicial role as follows:
The conception of the judicial role that
[Chief Justice John Marshall] possessed, and
that was shared by succeeding generations of
American judges until very recent times, took
it to be “the province and duty of the
judicial department to say what the law is,”
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177
(1803) (emphasis added) -- not what the law
shall be. That original and enduring American
perception of the judicial role sprang not
from the philosophy of Nietzsche but from the
jurisprudence of Blackstone, which viewed
30
(1965), however, developed a doctrine under which it could deny
retroactive effect to a newly announced rule of criminal
constitutional law. According to Linkletter, a decision to limit
the new rule to prospective application could be based upon a
balancing of the purpose of the new rule, the reliance placed upon
the previous view of the law, and the effect on the administration
of justice of a retrospective application. Id. at 636 (limiting
Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961)).
In the federal noncriminal law context, the Supreme Court
retroactivity as an inherent characteristic of
the judicial power, a power “not delegated to
pronounce a new law, but to maintain and
expound the old one.” 1 W. BLACKSTONE,
COMMENTARIES 69 (1765). Even when a “former
determination is most evidently contrary to
reason . . . [or] contrary to the divine law,”
a judge overruling that decision would “not
pretend to make a new law, but to vindicate
the old one from misrepresentation.” Id. at
69-70. “For if it be found that the former
decision is manifestly absurd or unjust, it is
declared, not that such a sentence was bad
law, but that it was not law.” Id. at 70
(emphasis in original). Fully retroactive
decisionmaking was considered a principal
distinction between the judicial and the
legislative power: “[I]t is said that that
which distinguishes a judicial from a
legislative act is, that the one is a
determination of what the existing law is in
relation to some existing thing already done
or happened, while the other is a
predetermination of what the law shall be for
the regulation of all future cases.” T.
COOLEY, CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS 91. The critics
of the traditional rule of full retroactivity
were well aware that it was grounded in what
one of them contemptuously called “another
fiction known as the Separation of powers.”
Kocourek, Retrospective Decisions and Stare
Decisis and a Proposal, 17 A.B.A.J. 180, 181
(1931).
31
similarly recognized that a judicial decision could be applied
nonretroactively if it established a new principle of law, if such
a limitation would avoid substantial inequitable results, and if
retrospective application would not retard the purpose and effect
of the new rule. Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106-07
(1971).
In Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314 (1987), the Supreme
Court overruled Linkletter and held that all newly declared rules
of law must be applied retroactively to all criminal cases pending
on direct review. Id. at 322. The Court based its decision on two
basic norms of constitutional adjudication, viz., first, that the
nature of judicial review strips a court of the quintessentially
legislative prerogative to make rules of law retroactive or
prospective within its discretion; and, second, that selective
application of new rules of law violates the principle of treating
similarly situated parties the same. Id. at 323.6 Dictum in
Griffith, stating that “civil retroactivity . . . continue[d] to be
governed by the standard announced in Chevron Oil[,]” id. at 322
n.8, caused the Court to divide over its meaning in subsequent
cases. In American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Smith, 496 U.S.
167 (1990), Justice O’Connor, writing for a plurality of four
justices, explicitly refused to extend Griffith to civil cases, and
used the Chevron Oil test to limit retroactivity of the Court’s
6
In Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989), a plurality of the
Court concluded that new constitutional rules of criminal procedure
would not be applied retroactively in habeas corpus proceedings
unless the rule fell within one of two narrow exceptions.
32
decision in an earlier case invalidating highway use taxes under
the Commerce Clause. Id. at 179. Four other justices rejected the
plurality’s approach to retroactivity as “anomalous” and refused to
hold that “the law applicable to a particular case is that law
which the parties believe in good faith to be applicable to the
case.” Id. at 219 (Stevens, J., joined by Brennan, J., Marshall,
J., and Blackmun, J., dissenting). Justice Scalia, concurring in
the judgment because he believed that the new rule of law was
incorrect, explicitly disagreed with Justice O’Connor’s
retroactivity analysis, stating that “prospective decisionmaking is
incompatible with the judicial role, which is to say what the law
is, not to prescribe what it shall be.” Id. at 201 (Scalia, J.,
concurring).
In James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U.S. 529(1991), the Court failed to produce a unified opinion for the
Court, but a majority agreed that a rule of federal law, once
announced and applied to the parties to the controversy, must be
given full retroactive effect to all others not barred by res
judicata or statutes of limitation; and that the theory of
selective prospectivity must be abandoned in civil cases.7
7
Justice Souter explained the methodology of retroactive,
selectively prospective, and purely prospective applications of
judicial decisions as follows:
As a matter purely of judicial mechanics,
there are three ways in which the
choice-of-law problem may be resolved. First,
a decision may be made fully retroactive,
applying both to the parties before the court
and to all others by and against whom claims
may be pressed, consistent with res judicata
and procedural barriers such as statutes of
33
limitations. This practice is overwhelmingly
the norm, and is in keeping with the
traditional function of the courts to decide
cases before them based upon their best
current understanding of the law. It also
reflects the declaratory theory of law,
according to which the courts are understood
only to find the law, not to make it. But in
some circumstances retroactive application may
prompt difficulties of a practical sort.
However much it comports with our received
notions of the judicial role, the practice has
been attacked for its failure to take account
of reliance on cases subsequently abandoned, a
fact of life if not always one of
jurisprudential recognition.
Second, there is the purely prospective
method of overruling, under which a new rule
is applied neither to the parties in the
law-making decision nor to those others
against or by whom it might be applied to
conduct or events occurring before that
decision. The case is decided under the old
law but becomes a vehicle for announcing the
new, effective with respect to all conduct
occurring after the date of that decision.
This Court has, albeit infrequently, resorted
to pure prospectivity, although in so doing it
has never been required to distinguish the
remedial from the choice-of-law aspect of its
decision. This approach claims justification
in its appreciation that "[t]he past cannot
always be erased by a new judicial
declaration," and that to apply the new rule
to parties who relied on the old would offend
basic notions of justice and fairness. But
this equitable method has its own drawback:
it tends to relax the force of precedent, by
minimizing the costs of overruling, and
thereby allows the courts to act with a
freedom comparable to that of legislatures.
Finally, a court may apply a new rule in
the case in which it is pronounced, then
return to the old one with respect to all
others arising on facts predating the
pronouncement. This method, which we may call
modified, or selective, prospectivity, enjoyed
its temporary ascendancy in the criminal law
during a period in which the Court formulated
new rules, prophylactic or otherwise, to
34
Justice Souter, whose lead opinion garnered the most support,
reasoned that the equality principle of Griffith (that similarly
situated litigants should be treated the same) carries comparable
or greater strength in the civil context, requiring that: (1) the
possibility of selective prospectivity be rejected in civil cases;
insure protection of the rights of the
accused. On the one hand, full retroactive
application of holdings such as those
announced in Miranda v. Arizona, Escobedo v.
Illinois, and Katz v. United States, would
have "seriously disrupt[ed] the administration
of our criminal laws[,] . . . requir[ing] the
retrial or release of numerous prisoners found
guilty by trustworthy evidence in conformity
with previously announced constitutional
standards." On the other hand, retroactive
application could hardly have been denied the
litigant in the law-changing decision itself.
A criminal defendant usually seeks one thing
only on appeal, the reversal of his
conviction; future application would provide
little in the way of solace. In this context,
without retroactivity at least to the first
successful litigant, the incentive to seek
review would be diluted if not lost
altogether.
But selective prospectivity also breaches
the principle that litigants in similar
situations should be treated the same, a
fundamental component of stare decisis and the
rule of law generally. For this reason, we
abandoned the possibility of selective
prospectivity in the criminal context in
Griffith v. Kentucky, even where the new rule
constituted a "clear break" with previous law,
in favor of completely retroactive application
of all decisions to cases pending on direct
review. Though Griffith was held not to
dispose of the matter of civil retroactivity,
selective prospectivity appears never to have
been endorsed in the civil context. This case
presents the issue.
Id. at 535-38 (internal citations omitted).
35
and (2) when a court has applied a new rule of law to the litigants
in the case before it, that application necessarily is a
retroactive application of the rule to a cause of action based on
events predating its adjudication, and therefore must be applied
with equality to all similarly situated litigants, except as to
rights acquired by them through the operation of res judicata or
statutes of limitation, due to the need for finality and an end to
litigation. Three justices dissented, defending the practices of
both pure and selective prospective application of decisions and
the continued viability of the Chevron Oil test. Id. at 549(O’Connor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., and Kennedy, J.,
dissenting).
In Harper v. Virginia Department of Taxation, 509 U.S. 86(1993), Justice Thomas authored a five-member majority opinion
expressly adopting a rule that “fairly reflects the position of a
majority of Justices in Beam”:
When this Court applies a rule of federal law to
the parties before it, that rule is the controlling
interpretation of federal law and must be given
full retroactive effect in all cases still open on
direct review and as to all events, regardless of
whether such events predate or postdate our
announcement of the rule. This rule extends
Griffith’s ban against “selective application of
new rules.” Mindful of the “basic norms of
constitutional adjudication” that animated our view
of retroactivity in the criminal context, we now
prohibit the erection of selective temporal
barriers to the application of federal law in
noncriminal cases. In both civil and criminal
cases, we can scarcely permit “the substantive law
[to] shift and spring” according to the “particular
equities of [individual parties’] claims” of actual
reliance on an old rule and of harm from a
retroactive application of the new rule. Our
approach to retroactivity heeds the admonition that
36
“[t]he Court has no more constitutional authority
in civil cases than in criminal cases to disregard
current law or to treat similarly situated
litigants differently.”
Id. at 97 (internal citations omitted).
Justice O’Connor, joined by the Chief Justice, dissented from
the Court’s rejection of the use of prospective retroactivity under
the Chevron Oil test, and expressed concern that the forgoing
language and another statement in Justice Thomas’s majority opinion
“intimates that pure prospectivity may be prohibited as well.” Id.
at 115 (O’Connor, J., joined by Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting).
Justices Kennedy and White, concurred in part, disagreeing with
that aspect of the majority opinion and expressing their continuing
view that pure prospectivity will be appropriate sometimes in the
civil context. Id. at 110 (Kennedy, J., joined by White, J.,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment).
The Supreme Court in Reynoldsville Casket Co. v. Hyde, 514
U.S. 749 (1995), held that under Harper its decision in Bendix
Autolite Corp. v. Midwesco Enterprises, Inc., 486 U.S. 888 (1988),
must be applied retroactively to plaintiff Hyde’s lawsuit filed in
1987 arising out of a 1984 vehicular accident, and that the
Supremacy Clause of the Federal Constitution bars Ohio from
applying its tolling statute to pre-Bendix torts and thus requires
reversal of the Ohio Supreme Court’s refusal to apply Bendix
retroactively. In Bendix, the Court had held unconstitutional (as
impermissibly burdening interstate commerce) an Ohio “tolling”
provision that, in effect, gave Ohio tort plaintiffs unlimited time
to sue out-of-state (but not in-state) defendants. The
37
Reynoldsville Casket Co. Court accepted Hyde’s acknowledgment that
Harper:
held that, when (1) the Court decides a case
and applies the (new) legal rule of that case
to the parties before it, then (2) it and
other courts must treat that same (new) legal
rule as “retroactive,” applying it, for
example, to all pending cases, whether or not
those cases involve predecision events.
Hyde, 514 U.S. at 752. Also, the court accepted Hyde’s concessions
that, as “‘a result of Harper, there is no question that Bendix
retroactively invalidated’ the tolling provision that makes her
suit timely[,]” id., and that Harper overruled Chevron Oil insofar
as the case (selectively) permitted the prospective-only
application of a new rule of law. Id. Nevertheless, Hyde argued
that the Ohio Supreme Court holding that Bendix may not be
retroactively applied to bar claims in state courts which had
accrued prior to the Bendix decision should be viewed simply as an
effort to fashion a remedy that takes into consideration her
reliance on pre-Bendix law, under the authority of a
recharacterization of Chevron Oil as a case in which the Court
simply took reliance interests into account in tailoring an
appropriate remedy for a violation of federal law. The Court
rejected Hyde’s argument because she “offers no more than simple
reliance (of the sort at issue in Chevron Oil) as a basis for
creating an exception to Harper’s rule of retroactivity -- in other
words, she claims that, for no special reason, Harper does not
apply.” Id. at 759. In so doing, the Court distinguished several
examples upon which Hyde relied, as instances in which courts
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applying “retroactively” a new rule of law to pending cases, for
well-established reasons, found that the new rule did not determine
the outcome of the case.
Thus, a court may find (1) an alternative way
of curing the constitutional violation, or (2)
a previously existing, independent legal basis
(having nothing to do with retroactivity) for
denying relief, or (3) as in the law of
qualified immunity, a well-established general
legal rule that trumps the new rule of law,
which general rule reflects both reliance
interests and other significant policy
justifications, or (4) a principle of law,
such as that of “finality” present in the
Teague context, that limits the principle of
retroactivity itself. But, this case [where a
concern about reliance alone has led the Ohio
court to create what amounts to and ad hoc
exemption from retroactivity [id. at 758]]
involves no such instance[.]
Id.Evidently, the Supreme Court has concluded that the Linkletter
and Chevron Oil departures from traditional retroactivity doctrine
proved unsatisfactory. The Court’s most recent decisions
substantially reject those departures and return to the general
rule of adjudicative retroactivity, leaving only an indistinct
possibility of the application of pure prospectivity in an
extremely unusual and unforeseeable case. See Jill E. Fisch,
Retroactivity and Legal Change: An Equilibrium Approach, 110 HARV.
L. REV. 1056, 1059 (1997).
D. Halphen Is Circuit Diversity Precedent
“Ordinarily, a state court’s answer to a certified question is
final and binding upon the parties between whom the issue arose.”
Sifers v. General Marine Catering Co., 892 F.2d 386, 391 & n.22
39
(5th Cir. 1990) (citing Hopkins v. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., 394
F.2d 656, 657 (5th Cir. 1968); National Educ. Ass’n. v. Lee County
Bd. of Pub. Instruction, 467 F.2d 447, 450 n.6 (5th Cir. 1972);
Redgrave v. Boston Symphony Orchestra, 855 F.2d 888, 903 (1st Cir.
1988); 17A CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 4248,
at 179 (2d ed. 1988)). Such an answer, therefore, generally
becomes “the law of the case,” Sifers, 892 F.2d at 391 & n.23
(citing Boyd v. Bowman, 455 F.2d 927, 928 (5th Cir. 1972) (per
curiam); Tarr v. Manchester Ins. Corp., 544 F.2d 14, 14-15 (1st
Cir. 1976) (per curiam)); and, further, because we consider the
state court’s answer to be binding in the proceedings between the
parties to the certified case, that answer becomes the law of this
circuit and binding upon parties who were not parties to the
certified case. Sifers, 892 F.2d at 391-92.
In Halphen v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 788 F.2d 274 (5th
Cir. 1986), this court received the Louisiana Supreme Court’s
answer to a certified question with the state court’s opinion,
Halphen v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 484 So. 2d 110 (La. 1986),
and applied that interpretation of Louisiana law by the state
supreme court to the parties and the case before this court.
Subsequently, this court has applied Halphen retroactively (and
prospectively) to cases arising both before and after the state
supreme court’s decision.8 Thus, Halphen is the controlling law of
8
See e.g., Robertson v. Superior PMI, Inc., 791 F.2d 402 (5th
Cir. 1986); Vickers v. Chiles Drilling Co., 822 F.2d 535 (5th Cir.
1987); Houston Oil & Minerals Corp. v. American Int’l Tool Co., 827
F.2d 1049 (5th Cir. 1987), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 1067 (1988);
Richard v. Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 853 F.2d 1258 (5th Cir.
40
this circuit in Louisiana diversity cases, and must be applied to
the present case because it arose and was pending when Halphen was
decided.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons assigned, we conclude that the Louisiana
Supreme Court will continue to apply its general rule under which
a judicial decision must be given retroactive effect unless the
rendering court specifies otherwise or such application is barred
by prescription or res judicata. Under that rule, which is the
generally accepted norm in all common and civil law jurisdictions,
the Halphen decision, which was silent as to its temporal
application, must be applied retroactively, consistently with
prescription and res judicata provisions. Further, because Halphen
was applied to the parties in that and subsequent cases, it is
circuit precedent and must be applied to the present case.
The judgment and ruling of the district court appealed from by
the plaintiffs-appellants are REVERSED and the case is REMANDED to
the district court for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
REVERSED and REMANDED
1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1042 (1989); Valenti v. Surgiteck-
Flash Med. Eng’g Corp., 875 F.2d 466 (5th Cir. 1989); Pennington v.
Vistron Corp., 876 F.2d 414 (5th Cir. 1989); Davis v. Commercial
Union Ins. Co., 892 F.2d 378 (5th Cir. 1990); Klem v. E.I. DuPont
De Nemours & Co., 19 F.3d 997 (5th Cir. 1994); Reeves v. AcroMed
Corp., 44 F.3d 300 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1104 (1995);
Reeves v. AcroMed Corp., 103 F.3d 442 (5th Cir. 1997).
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