896
Per Curiam
This case fits within the category of cases in which we have held it is proper to issue a GVR order. "Where intervening developments, or recent developments that we have reason to believe the court below did not fully consider, reveal a reasonable probability that the decision below rests upon a premise that the lower court would reject if given the opportunity for further consideration, and where it appears that such a redetermination may determine the ultimate outcome of the litigation, a GVR order is . . . potentially appropriate." Lawrence v. Chater, 516 U. S. 163, 167 (1996) (per curiam). The situation here is virtually identical to that in Thomas v. American Home Products, Inc., 519 U. S. 913 (1996), a state-law case from earlier in this Term. There, after the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled against petitioners, the Georgia Supreme Court overruled the holding that was the basis for the federal appeals court's holding. Id., at 914 (Scalia, J., concurring). The appellate court nevertheless denied a petition for rehearing, and we GVR'd. As Justice Scalia wrote in concurrence, our order was in keeping with our "longstanding practice" of vacating a court of appeals' decision based on a construction of state law that appears to contradict a recent decision of the highest state court. Id., at 915. "[A] judgment of a federal court ruled by state law and correctly applying that law as authoritatively declared by the state courts when the judgment was rendered, must be reversed on appellate review if in the meantime the state courts have disapproved of their former rulings and adopted different ones." Huddleston v. Dwyer, 322 U. S. 232, 236 (1944) (per curiam).
Given Sheets' explicit disapproval of the cases on which the Court of Appeals based its decision, there is reason to question the correctness of the Court of Appeals' decision. It is true that petitioner brought Sheets to the attention of the Court of Appeals in a motion to stay or recall its mandate and that the Court of Appeals denied this motion. But the Court of Appeals' ambiguous statement that petitioner's re-
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