Opinion ID: 781269
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Factfinding in Relation to Counts 1 & 2

Text: 55 Finally, Bogosian insists that the district court, in finding for the appellees on counts 1 and 2, committed various errors of law and ignored unrebutted evidence favorable to her case. Following a bench trial, the district court's findings of fact, including its witness-credibility assessments, are reviewed for clear error only. See Barrs v. Lockheed Martin Corp., 287 F.3d 202, 210 (1st Cir.2002); Carr, 191 F.3d at 7. The outcome in the instant case turned principally upon just such credibility determinations. 56 The district court explicitly credited appellees' testimony that Bogosian was fired solely because she voluntarily ceased performing any work at WRC, while continuing to draw full salary and benefits. Bogosian, 167 F.Supp.2d at 503 (This court credits the testimony of James and Harry.). Undaunted, Bogosian incorrectly asserts on appeal that her late brother, Harry, provided unrebutted deposition testimony that the actual basis for her termination had been that she sought to audit the corporate books. Instead, Harry simply attested to the fact that Bogosian had requested the audit and questioned the defendants' motives. Harry did not state, however, that this was what prompted Bogosian's discharge. 57 Thus, the mere description of Bogosian's requests certainly did not compel the district court to determine, as a fact, either that her audit requests were justified or that she was fired by her brothers in order to prevent her revelation of their improper business practices. Indeed, Bogosian has never adduced any corroborative evidence whatsoever in regard to her allegations. 58 Instead, Bogosian simply maintains that she adduced evidence that Harry was not terminated by WRC in the early 1980's for failure to perform his corporate duties, and that WRC's disparate treatment of her belies appellees' purportedly legitimate basis for terminating her. The district court reasonably determined, however, that Bogosian was well aware — regardless whether Harry should have been fired earlier — that she was knowingly inviting termination by her refusal to perform her own corporate responsibilities. Thus, although a rational factfinder conceivably may have inferred some such nefarious motive as that suggested by Bogosian based on the proffer of disparate-treatment evidence, the record plainly did not compel any such inference. 59 Further, Bogosian contends that her daughter presented unrebutted testimony that appellees advised her that it would be futile for Bogosian to come to work, since they intended to ignore her input on corporate decisionmaking. However, it remains within the exclusive province of the trier of fact to determine whether unrebutted testimony is creditworthy. See Carr, 191 F.3d at 7. Thus, the district court explicitly found (i) that Bogosian's daughter had her own agenda and (ii) that she had demonstrated on the witness stand that she lacked credibility. Bogosian, 167 F.Supp.2d at 500. 60 Next, with regard to whether appellees' commencement of the Fall River litigation constituted a discrete breach of their fiduciary responsibilities, Bogosian urges us to set aside the district court finding that appellees commenced their action in the good faith belief that Bogosian had misappropriated a corporate opportunity of WRC by purchasing the Fall River property on behalf of E & J. Id. at 500-01. She contends that the state court found not only that she had not breached her fiduciary duty, either to WRC or her brothers, but that appellees' lawsuit had been unfounded ( viz., frivolous, designed solely to harass and to recover damages to offset their anticipated buy-out of her shares). 61 Quite the contrary, the state court simply turned away appellees' alternative contentions on appeal, either (i) that they had adduced such compelling evidence of Bogosian's breach of her fiduciary responsibility that a reasonable factfinder was compelled to find in their favor, or (ii) that the judgment was against the clear weight of the evidence. In its unpublished opinion, made part of the record before us, the state appellate court explicitly noted that appellees had adduced evidence which might have been credited by the jury, but that the jury chose instead to credit Bogosian's version. Cf., e.g., Bartlett v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co., 538 A.2d 997, 1000 (R.I.1988) (noting that bad faith will not be inferred where party sued on debatable issue of law). The Bogosian appeal itself, ironically, has now been hoisted on the same petard. 62 Bogosian further faults the district court for (i) finding that she sustained no damages as a result of the Fall River lawsuit, and (ii) ignoring that the appellees had lodged a lis pendens against the Fall River property, that three prospective buyers thereafter decided not to purchase the property, and that state law permits the factfinder to infer that such a cloud on title thwarted its sale. See DeLeo v. Anthony A. Nunes, Inc., 546 A.2d 1344, 1347-48 (R.I.1988). As her citation to DeLeo itself acknowledges, however, any such inference is permissive, rather than mandatory. Id. (Filing such a document without a colorable claim is done at the filer's peril.). Moreover, appellees adduced ample evidence that the three prospective purchasers of the Fall River property backed out for reasons other than the lis pendens. Bogosian, 167 F.Supp.2d at 496-97. 63 Bogosian points also to her brother James's testimony that he has never believed that she stole a WRC corporate opportunity by purchasing the Fall River property through E & J. She insists that James's testimony compelled a finding that the property did not represent a corporate opportunity of WRC, and, consequently, that she could not have pirated such an opportunity from WRC. 64 The present contention conveniently ignores the requirement that the proffered testimony is to be viewed in the context of the witness's other testimony: (i) that James, unlike Bogosian, had not participated in the initial decision to acquire the property for E & J, rather than for WRC, and (ii) that James believed from the outset that Bogosian's decision violated her fiduciary duty to WRC and to their brother, Harry, who was not a partner in E & J. Additionally, the district court aptly cited James's testimony that the Fall River property acquisition was unlike E & J's other purchases, in that WRC itself had remitted the option fees to obtain the former. Bogosian, 167 F.Supp.2d at 502. 65 As the record on appeal contains ample supportive evidence for the district court judgment relating to counts 1 and 2, there was no clear error. See Barrs, 287 F.3d at 206. 11