Opinion ID: 2067059
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Jury Instruction on Intentional Interference with Business Relations

Text: NCRIC contends the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury that it had to find NCRIC's actions wrongful, in addition to being intentionally disruptive of Columbia's business relations, in order to impose liability for tortious interference. Columbia argues that NCRIC failed to preserve this objection for appeal. In any event, Columbia argues, the court's instructions were correct as given. The trial court instructed the jury on Columbia's claim of tortious interference with business relations as follows: In order for Columbia's claim to succeed, Columbia must prove by a preponderance of the evidence, one, the existence of a valid business relationship. Two, NCRIC's knowledge of the relationship. Three, intentional interference inducing or causing a breach or termination of the relationship. And, four, damages resulting from that breach. If you find that Columbia cannot prove any one of these elements, then you must find for NCRIC on Columbia's claim for tortious interference with business relations. This instruction exactly tracked the one NCRIC itself had proposed. But NCRIC also proposed a supplemental instruction requiring Columbia to prove an additional elementthat NCRIC's conduct was egregious. In pertinent part, this proposed instruction read as follows: In order to prove that NCRIC tortiously interfered with Columbia's business relationships or prospective business advantage, you must find that NCRIC engaged in what is termed egregious conduct. You must find that any interference by NCRIC was wrongful by some measure beyond the fact of the interference itself.... On the other hand, if you do find that NCRIC engaged in egregious conduct, you must find that Columbia has satisfied the intentional interference element of its tortious interference claims. Egregious conduct includes conduct such as libel, slander, physical coercion, fraud, misrepresentation or disparagement. At the charging conference, NCRIC argued that tortious interference has to be accompanied by behavior that is aggravated, tortious or egregious, while Columbia objected that proof of egregious conduct is not an element [of tortious interference] under D.C. law. The trial court stated that it would review the case law cited by the parties in support of their respective positions. Ultimately, the court declared that it would not give NCRIC's supplemental instruction. NCRIC duly noted its exception to the omission of the discussion of egregious conduct with respect to tortious interference. NCRIC raised no other objection to the court's instructions on the tort. [2] On appeal, tacitly admitting that its proposed instruction was erroneous, NCRIC does not argue that tortious interference with business relationships requires proof of egregious misconduct. Instead, substituting a less exacting standard, NCRIC argues that it could not be held liable without proof that its conduct was wrongful in some respect. NCRIC faults the trial court for not instructing the jury that Columbia had to prove NCRIC's interference was wrongful as well as intentional. Where the appellant has preserved the issue, we review a trial court's refusal to grant a request for a particular instruction for abuse of discretion, which may be found if the court's charge as a whole does not fairly and accurately state the applicable law. [3] In this case, however, because NCRIC consistently asked the trial court to instruct the jury that aggravated, tortious or egregious conduct had to be shown, and did not object to the omission of a less stringent wrongfulness requirement, it is debatable whether NCRIC preserved its claim of instructional error. At the time of trial in 2004, Civil Rule 51 provided that [n]o party may assign as error the giving or the failure to give an instruction unless that party objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly the matter objected to and the grounds of the objection. [4] To satisfy this requirement, the grounds of the objection must be called to the attention of the trial court in such manner as to clearly advise it as to the question of law involved, and must be sufficiently specific to bring into focus the precise nature of the alleged error. [5] The objection must be specific enough to direct the judge's attention to the correct rule of law. [6] A request for an erroneous or misleading instruction is not sufficient to preserve a valid objection, even if the proposed instruction has buried within it a kernel that may have some validity. [7] Thus, when parties propose an instruction more favorable to them than the law permits, the court ordinarily is under no duty to redraw their instruction for them. [8] If the rule were otherwise, as Columbia points out in its brief, litigants would have every incentive to request an incorrect, overreaching instruction; fail to offer a correct alternative if the trial court rejects that instruction; and then take a `chance on a favorable verdict, reserving a right to impeach it if it happens to go the other way.' [9] Consequently, courts enforce the rule strictly. For example, in Rogers v. Ingersoll-Rand Company, [10] the defendant manufacturer of a machine that malfunctioned and maimed the plaintiff asked for an instruction that it could not be found liable if the machine was accompanied by adequate warnings. This instruction, which the district court refused to give, misstated the applicable law and unduly favored the manufacturer; a legally correct instruction, which the manufacturer failed to propose and the court did not give, would have explained that adequate warnings were relevant to the question of liability but not necessarily dispositive of that question. [11] In affirming the resulting $16.7 million judgment, the court of appeals held that even if the manufacturer would have been entitled to a less sweeping instruction on its `warnings' theory, .... [t]he district court was under no obligation to tinker with the flawed proposed instruction until it was legally acceptable. [12] We recognized in Pannu v. Jacobson that a party's imperfect articulation of its position does not always excuse the trial court from tailoring the requested instruction... to meet the demands of an accurate and fair statement of the law. [13] The court should not refuse to instruct on an area of law central to the case merely because of technical defects in a proffered instruction. [14] If a proposed instruction is reasonably calculated to alert the trial court to a pertinent legal principle, a modicum of confusing and improper wording should not cause the trial court to reject its contents in toto. [15] Up to a point, this precept might be considered applicable in the present case. Arguably, when NCRIC contended that gross misconduct had to be shown, it implicitly raised the question whether any degree of misconduct had to be established. And notwithstanding NCRIC's consistent use of the adjective egregious, the second sentence of its proposed instruction would have required the jury to find only that any interference by NCRIC was wrongful by some measure beyond the fact of the interference itself. (Emphasis added.) NCRIC's claim on appeal is essentially that the trial court erred by failing to tell the jury just what that sentence stated. The preservation issue is a close one. NCRIC clearly wanted the court to set an elevated benchmark for Columbia to meet; it sought nothing less. Giving NCRIC the benefit of the doubt seems to depend on disregarding the clear import of its proposed instruction and taking a single, unheralded sentence in that instruction out of contextprecisely what the trial court normally has no obligation to do. However, for the sake of argument, we shall proceed as if NCRIC's claim is preserved for appellate review. It matters not in the end, because NCRIC's position on appeal fundamentally misstates this jurisdiction's law. We have held that to establish a prima facie case of tortious interference with contractual or other business relationships [16] in the District of Columbia, a plaintiff must prove four elements: (1) existence of a valid contractual or other business relationship; (2) the defendant's knowledge of the relationship; (3) intentional interference with that relationship by the defendant; [17] and (4) resulting damages. [18] We have never declared it an element of a prima facie case that the defendant's intentional interference be otherwise wrongful. Section 766 of the RESTATEMENT states: One who intentionally and improperly interferes with the performance of a contract (except a contract to marry) between another and a third person by inducing or otherwise causing the third person not to perform the contract, is subject to liability to the other for the pecuniary loss resulting to the other from the failure of the third person to perform the contract.[ [19] ] But among the jurisdictions that have addressed the question, there is little consensus on who has the burden of raising the issue of whether the interference was improper or not and subsequently of proving that issue.... [20] In the District of Columbia, that issue is settled. Instead of the plaintiff bearing the burden of proving that the defendant's conduct was wrongful, it is the defendant who bears the burden of proving that it was not. As we stated in Altimont, [o]nce a prima facie case has been established liability may still be avoided if the defendant can establish that his conduct was legally justified or privileged. [21] In other words, we elaborated in Sorrells, a trier of fact may find for the plaintiff who presents a prima facie case unless the defendant proves that his or her conduct was justified or privileged. [22] We explained that while the RESTATEMENT describes the tort as involving intentional and improper conduct, its reference to `improper' conduct is simply another way of saying that the alleged tortfeasor's conduct must be legally justified. [23] An instruction requiring the jury to find that any interference by NCRIC was wrongful by some measure beyond the fact of the interference itself would have led the jury astray by erroneously placing on Columbia the burden of proving wrongful conduct as part of its prima facie case. Such an instruction therefore should not have been given. (Still less should the trial court have given the egregious conduct instruction that NCRIC actually proposed.) NCRIC might have been entitled to an instruction on legal justification or privilege as an affirmative defense to intentional interference. NCRIC justified its intentional interference with Columbia's business relations as being necessary to protect its own existing economic interests, i.e., its insurance contracts with Columbia's physicians. Previous decisions of this court have recognized such a justification as affording a possible basis for an affirmative defense to tortious interference. [24] Thus, NCRIC might have requested a jury charge modeled on RESTATEMENT § 773, which states: One who, by asserting in good faith a legally protected interest of his own or threatening in good faith to protect the interest by appropriate means, intentionally causes a third person not to perform an existing contract or enter into a prospective contractual relation with another does not interfere improperly with the other's relation if the actor believes that his interest may otherwise be impaired or destroyed by the performance of the contract or transaction. This defense is of narrow scope, however, and protects the actor only when (1) he has a legally protected interest, and (2) in good faith asserts or threatens to protect it, and (3) the threat is to protect it by appropriate means. [25] Perhaps, as a matter of litigation strategy, NCRIC wanted to avoid an instruction explicitly requiring it to shoulder the burden of proving such a defense. Be that as it may, NCRIC did not request an affirmative defense instruction, and its objection to the absence of any discussion of egregious conduct did not suffice to inform the court that one was desired, or what it might have said. NCRIC therefore forfeited its objection to the court's failure to include such an instruction in its jury charge. [26] The court had no further obligation to piece together an unpleaded [affirmative defense] theory that [NCRIC] had only hinted at by proposing a defective instruction. [27]