They don't let us appellate judges out much and when you spend your days wading through briefs by the pallet load, some days you just can't resist inserting your tongue firmly in cheek.
Such seems to be the case in Jamison v. Ford Motor Company , an opinion written by Judge Ralph King Anderson of the South Carolina Court of Appeals.
Courtesy of William at the South Carolina Law Blog, here are some excerpts:
The cognoscenti of federal preemption jurisprudence bestow panoramic application so as to limit state common law tort actions. We decline to accept this broad-brush federal judicial barricade.
. . .
Importantly, scholars on basic conflict preemption principles inculcate in regard to the fundamental elixir of the rule when juxtaposing federal/state constitutional analysis. If a state statute, administrative rule, or common law cause of action conflicts with a federal statute, it is incontestable that the state law has no efficacy. It is pellucid that the Supremacy Clause does not bless unelected federal judges with carte blanche to utilize federal law as a conduit to impose their own views of tort law on the States. Assumptively, we recognize that common law tort actions are historically within the scope of the States’ police powers and are safe from preemption by a federal statute unless Congress reveals a clear and manifest purpose to preempt.
. . .
Finally, we place our imprimatur and approbation upon the arbitraments of the circuit court in regard to. . . .
Reading this was almost as much fun as writing it must have been. I won't say any more because every appellate judge has their own writing style and from my glass house vantage point, I am hardly one who should be throwing stones.
