Opinion ID: 531048
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Commissions from Washington Mills to a BCS Affiliate

Text: 51 DeLong presents additional, and more compelling, evidence of joint action between Washington Mills and BCS. Washington Mills paid Wood & Thompson, a Bahamian corporation which owned most of BCS's stock at the time, funds which were tied to sales of media to Pratt. 18 The payment of these funds, which amounted to approximately $50,000, is not in dispute. The payments were based on 15% of the wholesale selling price of media to Pratt and lasted for approximately two years after BCS ceased servicing the Columbus plant. 52 The defendants claim that this money was compensation for technical work done by BCS and for BCS's work in getting Washington Mills's product approved by Pratt, even though BCS no longer sold media to the Columbus plant. Such an override was not customary; in fact the evidence shows that Washington Mills had never paid such a commission to any other distributor. Defendants claim that the Pratt situation was so complex that additional compensation to BCS was justified. 53 DeLong claims that these commissions actually represented BCS's share of the inflated price Pratt paid for media. To support its argument, DeLong points to testimony by James Neil, a supervisor in the engineering group at Pratt who was instrumental in issuing the PMCs for the media at issue in this case. Neil worked closely with BCS from 1981 through 1983, and considered Robert Biebel to be a friend of his. Neil testified that he worked with Robert Biebel on testing of media, and that Biebel was compensated for this testing at the time it was performed. Biebel and BCS were compensated for testing directly, not through later sales of media to Pratt. Robert Biebel testified, however, that BCS was not paid for its 1979-83 testing and development of media for Pratt. 54 This testimony, along with other evidence in the record, demonstrates that genuine issues of material fact exist as to the precise nature of the payments from Washington Mills to BCS. Defendants call it compensation for their work on developing the Pratt account, while DeLong claims that it is merely Washington Mills passing on to BCS the benefits of the inflated price, because BCS was integral in setting up the scheme. A jury reasonably could infer that Washington Mills desired to enter into an agreement with BCS to exploit BCS's contacts with key Pratt people, and agreed to pay the commissions to BCS's offshore sister corporation, Wood & Thompson. A jury also could conclude that the Wood & Thompson commissions demonstrate that Washington Mills and BCS agreed on the pad to the price. The amount of the commissions was linked to the sale price of media to Pratt, and there is a reasonable inference that the commissions were a means for BCS to share in the pad by which the price was inflated. 55 Viewing the totality of this evidence in the light most favorable to DeLong, which we must, United States v. Diebold, Inc., 369 U.S. 654, 655, 82 S.Ct. 993, 994, 8 L.Ed.2d 176 (1962), a jury reasonably could conclude that Washington Mills and BCS worked together to develop special media for sale to Pratt and agreed to sell it at an inflated price. The meeting between BCS and Washington Mills officials in Atlanta, the trip to Pratt's Columbus plant, gratuities from BCS to key Pratt people, and the commissions paid by Washington Mills based on a percentage of the price of media sold to Pratt-all reasonably tend to support DeLong's conspiracy allegation. 56