The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia may answer a question of law certified to it by any court of the United States or by the highest appellate court or the intermediate appellate court of another state or of a tribe or of Canada, a Canadian province or territory, Mexico or a Mexican state, if the answer may be determinative of an issue in a pending cause in the certifying court and if there is no controlling appellate decision, Constitutional provision or statute of this state.
W. Va. Code § 51-1A-3
Power to answer
Known as the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act
The act spans §§ 51-1A-1 to 51-1A-9 (13 sections).
Applied in 19 court decisions — leading case 210 W. Va. 740 - Feliciano v. 7-Eleven, Inc. (2001)
Most recently applied in 235 W. Va. 303 - BPI, Inc. v. National Mutual Insurance Co. (May 2015)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: West Virginia Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain West Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.