Gunn v. Minton (11-1118)

argument 11-1118

Gunn v. Minton

Supreme Court of the United States 57 min 5 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 5 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the central jurisdictional issue presented in Gunn v. Minton?

John G. Roberts 0:05

Gun versus mitten. Ms. Weber?

Unknown 0:08

Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. In Grable this court explained that um Arising under jurisdiction demands not only a contested federal issue, but a substantial one embedded in a state claim in order to indicate whether there is a serious federal interest in exercising federal jurisdiction over the state claim. This Court should reverse the judgment below because Minton's Mr. Minton's claims do not present a substantial federal issue, and exercising federal jurisdiction over his claim and legal malpractice claims like his state legal malpractice claims would The question is whether the uh exp experimental use, whether that was uh a viable theory. Why isn't that As substantial. What do you mean by substantial?

Unknown 1:04

Well, Your Honor, defining substantiality is a difficult point. I I I I would answer in two layers. First, Mr. Minton's claim did not involve a legal question of does the x how does the experimental use doctrine work? How is it applied? What are its parameters? The question was, did his fact-bound and situation-specific affidavit present relevant evidence of the application here in this particular case? And it is not a substantial question because first From a a unique case perspective, it involved merely a hypothetical determination. There were no actual patent rights that would be at issue. Those were already fully, finally, irrevocably determined in the underlying patent litigation in federal court. And second, from a jurisprudence standpoint

Unknown 1:54

the uh the the question of uniformity of patent law, any decision by a State Court in Mr. Mitten's legal malpractice claim would not be binding in any way on either the PTO in a patent application or on any subsequent federal court deciding a real patent case. So you mean substantial beyond the the this particular case Yes, Your Honor, and I think that that's where the the Federal Circuits uh jurisdictional the Federal Circuits arising under jurisdiction standard, which the Supreme Court of Texas applied here, that's exactly where it goes awry, is that the court improperly conflates the question of necessity of a federal issue with the question of whether that issue is substantial. Grable case, this court emphasized that those are two separate issues.

Unknown 2:46

There are four prongs to the Grable test. The federal issue embedded in a state claim must be necessary to the state claim, actually disputed, substantial, and then there's a federalism inquiry that exercise of federal jurisdiction over the state claim can't upend the proper balance between state and federal authority. The Grable Court announced that, and then just a year later, in the Empire Health Choice uh case, Your Honor uh Justice Ginsburg, you wrote that opinion for the court, and that acted sort of as an underscoring of and here's how limited the Grable rule really is. The Empire Health Choice uh opinion distinguishes between Grable, which presented a nearly pure question of law, and the claims at issue in Emperor Health Choice, which were fact bound and situation specific, it distinguished the

Unknown 3:42

The question of whether a State Court is competent to apply federal law to the extent relevant to the claims and found that yes it was. And the the Court emphasized that certainly the State Courts are going to be deciding the occasional federal issue here and there, but let's not make a federal case out of each and every state tort claim that might have an embedded federal issue. Now, in the earlier argument, there was some discussion of the fact that jurisdiction means a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. But here this court has on more than one occasion determined that Jurisdiction arising under jurisdiction means the same thing in thirteen thirty-one, the general federal question.

Unknown 4:22

jurisdictional grant and thirteen thirty eight A, the uh the the w the exclusive provision that's applicable specifically to patents. Now that has been amended slightly. It it now includes compulsory counterclaims where they didn't used to be a part, but