O'MELVENY & MYERS, PETITIONER v. FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION as re ceiver for AMERICAN DIVERSIFIED SAVINGS BANK et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit
[June 13, 1994]
Justice Stevens , with whom Justice Blackmun,
Cases like this one, however, present a special
problem. They raise issues, such as the imputation
question here, that may not have been definitively
settled in the state jurisdiction in which the case is
brought, but that nevertheless must be resolved by
federal courts. The task of the federal judges who
confront such issues would surely be simplified if
Congress had provided them with a uniform federal rule
to apply. As matters stand, however, federal judges
must do their best to estimate how the relevant state
courts would perform their lawmaking task, and then
emulate that sometimes purely hypothetical model. The
Court correctly avoids any suggestion about how the
merits of the imputation issue should be resolved on
remand or in similar cases that may arise elsewhere. "The federal judges who deal regularly with questions of
state law in their respective districts and circuits are in
a better position than we to determine how local courts
would dispose of comparable issues." Butner v. United
States, 440 U.S. 48, 58 (1979).
