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Gasperini

Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 9:05 pm
by perfunctory
Can someone clarify gasperini for me? I am not getting this. I see in a lot of places that it stands for "reading the rules narrowly" to accommodate both the state and federal system. How exactly is that happening in the case?

Re: Gasperini

Posted: Mon May 15, 2017 9:55 pm
by Toubro
"Reading the rules narrowly" is one of the steps in any federal court's Erie analysis. It avoids a conflict between state and federal law, and so obviates the need for further analysis which is tbh just a bunch of ad hoc balancing moulded to to fit somewhere in the neighborhood of Byrd/Hanna/Sibbach/etc.

In Gasperini, RBG was pretty ticked off that a federal court sitting in diversity could potentially allow a jury award much larger than a New York court would for a claim arising under New York law. She very much wanted there to be a conflict between New York's standard of review for excessiveness of a jury's award and the federal standard, and wanted to toss out the federal standard for the New York one at the trial level, which is what the case did.