NMC Looks at the Odd Position of Sears v. Learmonth
NMC had a good post last week about the Mississippi Supreme Court's Order requesting briefing on the waiver issue in Sears v. Learmonth. This is the case where the 5th Circuit asked the Court to decide whether Mississippi's cap on non-economic damages is constitutional. That was the sole question that went to the Court.
But the Court appears hung up on the fact that the jury's verdict did not separate economic and non-economic damages and the District Court accepted a stipulation on the damages components. NMC writes:
So I’m going to express two different kinds of surprise, in the form of a question: Why would an appeals court not accept this stipulation by the parties? And, once the federal court has accepted the stipulation, what business is it of the state court, on certification of a different question altogether, to question that?
I’m taking this to mean they really, really don’t want to reach the question of constitutionality of the caps.
Good questions and a logical conclusion based on the posture of the case. Also interesting is Anderson's comment on NMC's post wondering why the Court even accepted the question if—as it appears—it wants to avoid answering it.
Here is my prior post on the Court's request for additional briefing.
I guess there are no more Fun Fridays.
That sounds really forlorn, Sammy.
thanks for the link, Phillip.
"Anderson's comment on NMC's post wondering why the Court even accepted the question if—as it appears—it wants to avoid answering it"
I didn't mean for my comment to be taken that way. I was half-jocularly saying that the MSSC could have let the 5th Circuit take an Erie guess, and then whenever the issue reached the MSSC via the state courts, it would've had that Erie-guess decision to look at in crafting its own resolution of the question.
I don't know whether the MSSC is "ducking" the issue or not; it presumably could dismiss the certified question as improvidently granted, if it liked.
Dodge ball has begun
Is there any guesses or indications from those with experience as to when a decision could be expected?