Lane v. Broadcast

ALYCIA LANE, Appellant v. CBS BROADCASTING, INC., T/A KYW-TV;

MICHAEL COLLERAN AND LAWRENCE MENDTE

ALYCIA LANE v. CBS BROADCASTING INC., T/A KYW-TV;

MICHAEL COLLERAN, LAWRENCE MENDTE

APPEAL OF: LAWRENCE MENDTE, Appellant

ALYCIA LANE v. CBS BROADCASTING, INC. T/A KYW-TV,MICHAEL COLLERAN, LAWRENCE MENDTE

APPEAL OF: CBS BROADCASTING INC. AND MICHAEL COLLERAN, Appellant

J. A20007/14

No. 1258 EDA 2013

No. 1416 EDA 2013

No. 1417 EDA 2013

SUPERIOR COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

Appeal from the Order, March 20, 2013, in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Civil Division at No. September Term, 2008, No. 03425

Appeal from the Order Dated May 16, 2011, in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Civil Division at No. September Term, 2008, No. 03425

BEFORE: FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E., MUNDY AND MUSMANNO, JJ.

MEMORANDUM BY FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E.:

This is a consolidated appeal in the defamation action brought by plaintiff, Alycia Lane ("Lane"). We reverse in part, affirm in part, and remand for further proceedings.

The underlying facts of this matter may be briefly summarized as follows:

Plaintiff Alycia Lane was employed by CBS as a news anchor from September 2003 to January 2008. See Plaintiff's Amended Complaint, ¶ 9. CBS also employed Defendant Lawrence Mendte ("Mendte") as a news anchor until approximately June 2008. Beginning in 2006, Mendte began illegally accessing both the personal and work email accounts of Plaintiff.[Footnote 1] Mendte used a device known as a "KeyCatcher" to obtain the passwords toPlaintiff's email accounts. After acquiring the passwords, he repeatedly accessed Plaintiff's email accounts without her authorization. Mendte accessed Plaintiff's passwords and emails when he was both at work and at home. See Mendte Deposition, p. 115-117; Government Criminal Information, p. 3-17. He then would "leak" some of the information he read in Plaintiff's emails to the press and the information would appear in numerous news stories. See Amended Complaint, 18, 23, 25, 28; Mendte Deposition, p. 152-153, 157, 167-168, 207. Plaintiff alleges that Mendte accessed her email accounts without her authorization over 7,000 times throughout a two-year time period. See Amended Complaint, ¶¶ 14, 17. Mendte eventually pled guilty in a criminal case against him to intentionally accessing Plaintiff's email accounts without her authorization.[Footnote 2]

[Footnote 1] CBS provided to its employees, including Plaintiff, a "work" email account. The Plaintiff also had two personal email accounts -- one with Apple Computer (".mac account") and one with Yahoo!. See Amended Complaint, ¶11.

[Footnote 2] Specifically, Mendte pled guilty to violating federal criminal statute 18 U.S.C. §§1030(a)(2)(C) and 1030(c)(2)(B)(ii).

Plaintiff claims that she repeatedly informed CBS of her belief that somebody was hacking into her email accounts. Despite her repeated complaints, Plaintiff alleges that CBS did not perform a reasonable investigation into the hacking. Plaintiff filed the present lawsuit in September 2008 against, inter alia, CBS and Mendte. In Count VII of the Amended Complaint, Plaintiff brought a claim for negligence against CBS. Plaintiff claims that CBS had a duty to protect Plaintiff from Mendte's criminal conduct and to investigate the allegation of criminal conduct made by Plaintiff. See Plaintiff's OmnibusOpposition to Summary Judgment, p. 65. Plaintiff alleges that as a direct and proximate result of CBS' negligence, Plaintiff suffered reputational damage and financial losses arising from that reputational damage. See Plaintiff's Amended Complaint, ¶ 160. CBS is now moving for summary judgment on Plaintiff's negligence claim.

Trial court opinion, 5/16/11 at 1-2.

Lane also brought a claim for defamation against CBS based upon the following January 8, 2008 statement, read on the air:

CBS 3 announced today that Alycia Lane has been released from her contract. Lane is facing a charge of assaulting a police officer in New York last month, a charge she categorically denies.

CBS 3 President and General Manager Michael Colleran issued the following statement, it says quote:

After assessing the overall impact of a series of incidents resulting from judgments she has made, we have concluded that it would be impossible for Alycia to continue to report the news as she, herself, has become the focus of so many news stories. We wish to make clear that we are not prejudging the outcome of the criminal case against Alycia that is pending in New York. We understand that Alycia expects to be fully vindicated in that proceeding. We hope that is the case and we wish her the best in all her future endeavors.

On December 12, 2012, the Honorable Allan L. Tereshko dismissed all claims against CBS, and some claims against Mendte, based on spoliation of evidence. Specifically, Judge Tereshko found that Lane had intentionallydisposed of her 2005 Apple G4 laptop computer ("the 2005 Laptop"), thereby depriving CBS and Mendte of any meaningful defense. Judge Tereshko determined that Lane's case was overwhelmingly based upon documents originated and stored in her 2005 Laptop. Also on December 12, 2012, Judge Tereshko granted summary judgment for CBS on Lane's claims for defamation and false light. On March 20, 2013, the remaining claims against Mendte were dismissed based on spoliation.

We will address Lane's claims on appeal first. She has raised the following issues for our review:

1. Utilizing "strict scrutiny," did the trial court abuse its discretion in dismissing Plaintiff's claims based upon spoliation?

2. Did the trial court err and violate the coordinate jurisdiction rule in reversing the denial of the CBS motion for summary judgment as to defamation and false light?

3. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in excluding the expert testimony of Frank Keel as to defamation?

4. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in denying Plaintiff's motion in limine to preclude at trial the deposition of Officer Bernadette Enchautegui, and Plaintiff's motion for a de bene esse deposition of her?

5. Viewed in totality, does Judge Tereshko's conduct evidence an appearance of impropriety?

Lane's brief at 4-5.

"When reviewing a court's decision to grant or deny a spoliation sanction, we must determine whether the court abused its discretion." Mount Olivet Tabernacle Church v. Edwin L. Wiegand Division, 781 A.2d 1263, 1269 (Pa.Super. 2001) (citing Croydon Plastics Co. v. Lower Bucks Cooling & Heating, 698 A.2d 625, 629 (Pa.Super. 1997) (recognizing that "[t]he decision whether to sanction a party, and if so the severity of such sanction, is vested in the sound discretion of the trial court")). Such sanctions arise out of "the common sense observation that a party who has notice that [evidence] is relevant to litigation and who proceeds to destroy [evidence] is more likely to have been threatened by [that evidence] than is a party in the same position who does not destroy [the evidence]." Mount Olivet, 781 A.2d at 1269 (quoting Nation-Wide Check Corp. v. Forest Hills Distributors, Inc., 692 F.2d 214, 218 (1st Cir. 1982)). Our courts have recognized accordingly that one potential remedy for the loss or destruction of evidence by the party controlling it is to allow the jury to apply its common sense and draw an "adverse inference" against that party. See Schroeder v. Commonwealth of Pa., Dep't of Transp., 551 Pa. 243, 710 A.2d 23, 28 (1998). Although award of summary judgment against the offending party remains an option in some cases, its severity makes it an inappropriate remedy for all but the most egregious conduct. See Tenaglia v. Proctor & Gamble, Inc., 737 A.2d 306, 308 (Pa.Super. 1999) ("[S]ummary judgment is not mandatory simply because the plaintiff bears some degree of fault for the failure to preserve the product.").

Creazzo v. Medtronic, Inc., 903 A.2d 24, 28-29 (Pa.Super. 2006).

To determine the appropriate sanction for spoliation, the trial court must weigh three factors:

(1) the degree of fault of the party who altered or destroyed the evidence;(2) the degree of prejudice suffered by the opposing party; and (3) whether there is a lesser sanction that will avoid substantial unfairness to the opposing party and, where the offending party is seriously at fault, will serve to deter such conduct by others in the future.

Mount Olivet, 781 A.2d at 1269-70 (quoting Schmid v. Milwaukee Elec. Tool Corp., 13 F.3d 76, 79 (3d Cir.1994)). In this context, evaluation of the first prong, "the fault of the party who altered or destroyed the evidence," requires consideration of two components, the extent of the offending party's duty or responsibility to preserve the relevant evidence, and the presence or absence of bad faith. See Mt. Olivet, 781 A.2d at 1270. The duty prong, in turn, is established where: "(1) the plaintiff knows that litigation against the defendants is pending or likely; and (2) it is foreseeable that discarding the evidence would be prejudicial to the defendants." Id. at 1270-71.

Id. at 29.

Here, we note that the defendants never requested production of the 2005 Laptop during discovery. The Honorable Howland Abramson, who presided over this case until his retirement, previously ruled that Lane had satisfied her discovery document production obligations. In addition, from our review of the record, the defendants' argument that there are missing documents including e-mail correspondence between Lane and her friends is, at best, speculative.

Lane explained that her 2005 Laptop "died" and the screen went black, so she purchased a new MacBook laptop ("the 2008 Laptop") from the Apple store. According to Lane, the Apple store transferred data includingphotographs from her old laptop to the new one, and she then discarded the 2005 Laptop.¹

The trial court's conclusion that Lane's case is based upon documents originated and stored in her 2005 Laptop, and that her disposal of the 2005 Laptop...