InterCity Maint av. Local 254 Service Employees

Page 82

241 F.3d 82 (1st Cir. 2001)

INTERCITY MAINTENANCE COMPANY, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. LOCAL 254, SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION; SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION, AFL-CIO; VICTOR LIMA AND DONALD COLEMAN, Defendants, Appellees.

No. 00-1522

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

Heard November 9, 2000

Decided March 2, 2001

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND

[Hon. Ronald R. Lagueux, U.S. District Judge]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Vincent F. Ragosta Jr., with whom Matthew T. Oliverio and Christine M. Curley were on brief, for appellant.

John B. Lawlor Jr., with whom Daniel V. McKinnon and Dean J. Wagner were on brief, for appellees Local 254, Victor Lima and Donald Coleman.

Steven K. Hoffman, with whom Richard M. Peirce, Adam C. Robitaille and Christy Hoffman were on brief, for appellee Service Employees International Union.

Before Selya, Circuit Judge, Coffin, Senior Circuit Judge, and Stahl, Circuit Judge.

COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge.

This case stems from a labor dispute in which local union officials used heavy-handed tactics in an attempt to unionize a company. Appellant Intercity Maintenance Company (Intercity), a non-union janitorial service, sued the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), its local affiliate (Local 254), and two of the affiliate's officers, Victor Lima and Donald Coleman, for unlawful secondary activity in violation of § 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), 29 U.S.C. § 187, and a variety of state tort claims, two of them alleging defamation. Summary judgment was granted to the SEIU and Lima on all counts, and to Coleman on all but the defamation claims. Local 254 went to trial on the federal claim and, along with Coleman, on the two remaining state law counts for defamation. After the close of the plaintiff's evidence, the court in a bench ruling granted defendants' Rule 50 motion for judgment as a matter of law on the three outstanding counts. We affirm the summary judgment in all respects and the Rule 50 judgment on the defamation claims, but remand the LMRA claim for retrial.

We are in full agreement with the district court's convincing resolution of the summary judgment issues and adopt its reasoning as articulated in its published opinion. See Intercity Maint. Co. v. Local 254 Serv. Employees Int'l Union, 62 F. Supp. 2d 483 (D.R.I. 1999). We therefore focus our review on the Rule 50 judgment granted at trial. Our brief recitation of the pertinent facts is culled from the district court's ruling, as well as relevant trial testimony, and presented in the light most favorable to Intercity. See Russo v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 140 F.3d 6, 8 (1st Cir. 1998).

Background

Intercity provided janitorial services to Women and Infants Hospital (Women & Infants) and Blue Cross/Blue Shield (Blue Cross) in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1989 and 1990, respectively. Beginning in late 1994, Local 254, acting through its director of organizing, Coleman, and his assistant, Lima, made repeated attempts to persuade Intercity to unionize its eighty employees and let Local 254 be their collective bargaining representative. Intercity President Michael Bouthillette rebuffed these overtures, refusing to sign the proposed collective bargaining agreement because, he said, it was up to his workers, not him, to decide whether to unionize.

In January and February 1995, Lima repeatedly warned Bouthillette to sign the collective bargaining agreement, or else Local 254 would drive Intercity out of business by picketing in front of its two major customers, Women & Infants and Blue Cross.¹ On March 28th, Coleman reiterated this threat to Blue Cross attorney Gary St. Peter, who testified that Coleman had told him he would throw up a picket line in front of Blue Cross "whether . . . it's illegal or not."

On March 20, 1995, Coleman sent two letters to Blue Cross's director of facilities management, John Leite, who was in charge of procuring janitorial services. The first letter, addressed to Bouthillette and copied to Leite, accused Intercity of violating federal and state laws and regulations in handling hazardous substances, and demanded information about Blue Cross's ventilation system. The second letter, sent the same day directly to Leite, requested the same information from Blue Cross.

On May 5th, Blue Cross put its cleaning services contract out to bid, and Intercity lost it to a unionized bidder. Bouthillette testified that the bid Intercity submitted, $6,597 per month, was the same price it had charged since 1990 when it first started the Blue Cross account. Bouthillette also testified that Leite had told him "we're going to go with the union contractor, and if you can resolve things with [Local 254], there's a good chance you'll get [the contract] back, but if not . . . . if you don't, there's not much of a chance." At one point, Lima told Bouthillette that Local 254 no longer wanted to organize his workers; it just wanted to drive Intercity out of business. By August 1995, Intercity was no longer servicing Blue Cross.

Local 254 did not limit its interference with Intercity's customers to Blue Cross. On March 31, 1995, Local 254 began a week-long picket line outside of Women & Infants, distributing printed handbills that contained grave accusations, including false references to Intercity not providing health insurance or holiday pay to its employees and paying less than the prevailing wage. In fact, Intercity did provide those benefits and paid its employees more than the union wage contemplated in the proposed collective bargaining agreement. Bouthillette testified that his contact at Women & Infants, Mark Neal, told him on the day picketing started, "We can't have this here . . . . We'll do what we have to do, but this doesn't look very good for you in the future." Nearly two years later, in 1997, Intercity lost the contract for three buildings at Women & Infants, but continued to perform services at seven others.

The original complaint, filed in 1995, alleged the LMRA claim along with state tort causes of action and was amended in 1997 to add separate counts for defamation involving Blue Cross (Count IV) and Women & Infants (Count V). As we have noted, only the LMRA claim against Local 254, and the defamation claims against Local 254 and Coleman, went to trial.

At trial, Bouthillette testified that Intercity suffered pecuniary damage not only from losing the accounts, but also from defendants besmirching its reputation, which diverted Bouthillette from developing new business due to the inordinate amount of time he spent reassuring customers that they would not be targeted for picketing. Plaintiff also introduced into evidence an accounting report, which quantified Intercity's loss from the Blue Cross account at roughly $30,000 per year.

In a bench ruling issued at the close of the plaintiff's evidence, the court granted defendants' Rule 50 motion on all three claims. It held the evidence in support of Intercity's LMRA claim insufficient as a matter of law because, even if Local 254's actions were proscribed illegal secondary activity (which was assumed for purposes of the decision), Intercity failed to show how that activity caused it to lose the Blue Cross and Women & Infants accounts. As for the two defamation counts, the court held that, although the evidence of knowing or reckless false statements was "overwhelming," Intercity presented "no evidence that the plaintiff lost business at Blue Cross or at Women & Infants as a result of the defamation."

Appellant argues that it presented sufficient evidence on both fronts to reach the jury. On the LMRA claim, appellant asserts that the jury should have been afforded an opportunity to find that Intercity lost both the Blue Cross and Women & Infants accounts due to Local 254's illegal interference. On the defamation claims, appellant argues that it did not need to present evidence to prove damages and, even if it did, its proof on damages was sufficient. It also assigns error to the court's refusal to admit evidence of Local 254's assets in support of a claim for punitive damages.

We review Rule 50 challenges to the sufficiency of evidence presented at trial de novo, affirming entry of judgment as a matter of law "only if there 'is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for [the non-moving party].'" Tang v. Rhode Island Dep't of Elderly Affairs, 163 F.3d 7, 11 (1st Cir. 1998) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a)(1)). When judgment is entered before the jury is called upon to render its verdict, we examine the legal sufficiency of the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and require more than a mere scintilla of evidence or speculation to justify the submission of an issue to the jury. Id. And, of course, we must ensure that the trial court has refrained from making credibility determinations or weighing the evidence.

Discussion

Appellant challenges the court's Rule 50 judgment, arguing that its claims of unlawful secondary activity and defamation should have gone to the jury. We agree, in part. As for the LMRA claim, we conclude that the evidence linking Intercity's loss of the Blue Cross account to Local 254's interference was sufficient to merit consideration by a fact finder, but the evidence of losses attendant to the union's activities at Women & Infants was inadequate as a matter of law, particularly because that account was not terminated until almost two years later. As for the defamation claims, Intercity failed to introduce more than a scintilla of evidence of reputational harm or other specific damages. Accordingly, we remand the LMRA claim for trial, limited to liability for, and damages stemming from, Intercity's loss of the Blue Cross account, and affirm the district court's judgment on the defamation claims.

Unlawful Secondary Activity

Section 8(b) of the LMRA...