Norman Bloom v. Aftermath Public Adjusters, Inc., et al.

This Court holds that when a state has adopted procedures for certification of state law questions, a federal court exercising diversity jurisdiction should certify dispositive state law questions when the state law is not clear or is nonexistent and the issue is significant to the state. There is a dramatic split among the circuits as to what standards they should apply when exercising their discretion to certify a state law question with some circuits focusing on the state certification rules and the others not. The result is that some circuits have a much lower percent of state law questions being certified than other circuits. With the forgoing in mind, the question presented in this petition is: Whether the language of a state’s certification rule should factor into the federal court’s decision to certify a dispositive state law question in a diversity case when state law is not clear or is nonexistent on an issue significant to the state.