Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, Inc. · ¶41

It is unclear what gives federal courts the authority to bar suits based on judicial estoppel. Often, as in the case below, federal courts treat judicial estoppel as a matter of federal law and feel free to craft their own standards and extend the doctrine to new contexts. But, the doctrine appears to have no basis in any statute, any Federal Rule of Civil Procedure, or any traditional inherent power of federal courts. Although the doctrine purports to punish litigants to “protect the integrity of the judicial process,” Ed wards v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 690 F. 2d 595, 598 (CA6 1982), the courts of appeals have not justified it as an exercise of the traditional sanctioning power that courts have been held to have in other contexts, see, e.g., Link v. Wabash R. Co., 370 U. S. 626, 629–630 (1962). And, although federal courts often assume that the doctrine can arise from their general…

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