Opinion ID: 198846
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lack of specificity

Text: 165 As noted supra, Wildes and related state precedent indicate that the Maine courts today will treat as actionable promises of future performance that are closely akin to representations of existing fact. We doubt, however, that defendants' alleged promises to show plaintiffs and fellow truckers in a positive light fit into this category. 166 An initial difficulty is whether the promise to provide positive coverage was unconditional or whether it should be interpreted as containing an implied condition that plaintiffs' own conduct, while driving cross-country under defendants' scrutiny, must at least be consistent with such favorable treatment. Dateline is, after all, a news program; reporters do not normally overlook newsworthy conduct, and it is hard to imagine that the parties expected positive coverage no matter how badly plaintiffs later behaved. Here, subsequent to the alleged promise, Kennedy admitted on camera to various regulatory violations and to taking illegal drugs. Should the alleged promise be construed to require defendants to ignore this evidence of misconduct and to present plaintiffs in all respects favorably? If we read the promise to contain an implied condition that plaintiffs behave appropriately in order to receive positive coverage, then it is hard to see that defendants can be held liable for misrepresentation. Even had the promise been initially disingenuous, in that defendants were out to get plaintiffs all along, Kennedy's voluntary breach of the implied condition entitled defendants to provide truthful coverage that was less than positive. In any event, the difficulty of construing the promise in light of subsequent events makes it a questionable basis for recovery under Maine's evolving law of deceit, unlike the clear-cut representation not to include PATT in the program. See Wildes, 389 A.2d at 840. 167 The promise to provide positive coverage might, indeed, be viewed as more akin to puffing or trade talk, which we held in Schott would not support recovery in fraud. 976 F.2d at 65. We determined in Schott that the plaintiff franchisee could not have reasonably relied on a defendant franchiser's statements that new products would increase sales in the coming years and that it would continue to be committed to the motorcycle market. See id. We thought that the plaintiff could not have justifiably understood the alleged misrepresentations to be assurances as to specific facts, rather than mere opinion. Id. 168 The Seventh Circuit, in Desnick v. Am. Broad. Cos., Inc., 44 F.3d 1345 (7th Cir. 1995), likened journalists' promises of this nature to puffery: 169 Investigative journalists well known for ruthlessness promise to wear kid gloves. They break their promise, as any person of normal sophistication would expect. If that is 'fraud,' it is the kind against which potential victims can easily arm themselves by maintaining a minimum of skepticism about journalistic goals and methods. 170 Id. at 1354. There, an ophthalmic clinic and two of its surgeons sued a television network and others involved in the broadcast of a report regarding certain medical practices at the clinic. See id. at 1347. Their fraud claim was premised on defendants' representations that the report would be balanced and would not involve ambush interviews or undercover surveillance. Id. at 1348. The court went so far as to suggest that no reasonable person could rely on such promises. See id. at 1354. Similarly, a Maine court might think that defendants' positive assurances were simply too vague and laconic to inspire, on the part of a reasonable person, the reliance necessary for a misrepresentation claim. 171 There is a further reason for believing that a Maine court would reject the promise to provide positive coverage as the basis for a misrepresentation claim. Were the Maine court to rule that this promise was sufficiently factual, it would then have to face the difficult issue of whether it would be constitutional to use so vague a yardstick in a misrepresentation action founded on speech relating to matters of public concern. State courts, like their federal counterparts, normally seek to avoid construing common law rules so as to create serious constitutional problems. See Watters v. TSR, Inc., 904 F.2d 378, 383 (6th Cir. 1990) (state court would avoid applying its common law in a way that would bring the constitutional problems to the fore). Cf. Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council, 485 U.S. 568, 575 (1988) (court must adopt reasonable alternative interpretation of statute when necessary to avoid serious constitutional problems). 172 The constitutional prohibition of vagueness within the realm of defamation is well established. See Levinsky's, 127 F.3d at 129-30 (statement that plaintiff store was trashy too vague to support finding of defamation). We noted in Levinsky's that under the First Amendment, a statement cannot be defamatory unless it can be reasonably understood as having an objectively verifiable meaning: [t]he vaguer a term, or the more meanings it reasonably can convey, the less likely it is to be actionable. Id. at 129. 173 Similar requirements of objectivity and specificity have been applied to non-defamation claims that implicate the First Amendment. In Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 55 (1988), the Supreme Court acknowledged the dangers of vagueness in holding that a jury should not be permitted to apply a standard of outrageousness to plaintiff's claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. 485 U.S. at 55. The Court held that that standard possessed an inherent subjectiveness that impermissibly allowed a jury to impose liability based on personal beliefs. Id. Statements challenged as vague also have been given heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment in a variety of other contexts. See, e.g., Hynes v. Mayor and Council of Borough of Oradell, 425 U.S. 610, 620 (1976) (stating, in considering constitutionality of municipality's canvassing and solicitation ordinance, that [t]he general test of vagueness applies with particular force in review of laws dealing with speech); Kusek v. Family Circle, Inc., 894 F. Supp. 522, 528 (D. Mass. 1995) (in cookbook author's trademark infringement claim against publisher, court was reluctant to enforce vague, oral contracts where Defendant's First Amendment rights might be affected). 174 Defendants point out that whether the resultant program in a given case was sufficiently positive might often be incapable of being proven or disproven sufficient for First Amendment purposes. How much criticism is permissible before the program would lose its positive character? Would the revelation of a single regulatory violation on Kennedy's part suffice to establish misrepresentation? And, as discussed above, the promise of positive coverage may have had an implied condition of good conduct that Kennedy breached when he admitted to wrongdoing during the Dateline trip. All of these actual or potential problems suggest that the promise to provide positive coverage could be too contingent to satisfy constitutional norms. 175 We conclude that a Maine court would at least worry that premising a finding of misrepresentation on such a vague term would place too great a burden on speech protected by the state and federal constitutions. 19 Without declaring ourselves one way or the other on the constitutional issue, we believe that the Maine court would not choose to include the positive coverage assurance within its traditional common law rule merely to arrive in these uncharted constitutional waters. 20 176 We conclude, therefore, that an action in misrepresentation under Maine law did not lie in these circumstances for defendants' alleged promise to provide positive coverage. It was, therefore, error to submit this representation to the jury as a potential basis for liability.