Opinion ID: 1470023
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Contempt Finding Based on the Attorney General's Official Website Posting

Text: It appears that in his written order of June 2, 2006, the trial justice also found the Attorney General in contempt of his February 22, 2006 bench order, which prohibited any discussion with jurors regarding the case. Because we do not believe the Attorney General's website posting qualified as a discussion, we reverse the finding of contempt and vacate the imposition of sanctions. Because of the severe consequences of a civil-contempt finding, courts have read court decrees to mean rather precisely what they say. NBA Properties, Inc. v. Gold, 895 F.2d 30, 32 (1st Cir.1990). Any ambiguities or uncertainties in court orders are read in the light most favorable to the person charged with contempt. Id. at 32. Addressing this method of interpretation, Justice Frankfurter of the United States Supreme Court said in a colorful dissent: Obedience must of course be secured for the command of a court. To secure such obedience is the function of a proceeding for contempt. But courts should be explicit and precise in their commands and should only then be strict in exacting compliance. To be both strict and indefinite is a kind of judicial tyranny. McComb v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 336 U.S. 187, 195, 69 S.Ct. 497, 93 L.Ed. 599 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). We adopted this standard in Sunbeam Corp., 86 R.I. at 195, 134 A.2d at 163, in which the respondent was enjoined from selling certain products in its place of business. Reading this prohibition narrowly, we accepted the respondent's literal interpretation that a sale on the sidewalk outside its place of business did not violate the order. Id. at 195-96, 134 A.2d at 163. We said that [t]his may be a narrow construction of the injunction in [respondent's] favor, but under the law as we understand it the respondent is entitled to rely on such a construction. Id. at 196, 134 A.2d at 163. Similarly, in United States v. Charmer Industries, Inc., 722 F.2d 1073, 1076 (2d Cir.1983), the Arizona Attorney General was enjoined from making any publication or other use of any portion of the [defendant's Presentence] Report. When the Attorney General's office gave a newspaper reporter a memorandum with references to that report, a contempt motion was filed. Id. The trial justice, however, refused to find the attorney involved in contempt because the actual report was not provided to reporters. Id. at 1077. The Second Circuit affirmed this holding: Although we consider [the attorney's] conduct reprehensible, we feel compelled to accept [the trial justice's] findings as not clearly erroneous and to deny the contempt motion principally because there was not a clear directive from this Court which barred the actions undertaken by [the attorney]. Id. Here, the parties were enjoined from having any discussion with this jury. Interpreting this language narrowly, as we must, we cannot conclude that a website posting qualifies as a discussion, which typically involves an exchange of information or ideas between more than one person. Constrained by the actual words in the bench order, we reverse the trial justice's finding of contempt and vacate the imposition of sanctions. Finally, and although we reverse each finding of contempt, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the enormous burden that the trial justice carried as he presided over litigation that must have seemed interminable and that always was accompanied by a significant amount of local and national media glare, public posturing, and a high level of general interest. Our reversal should in no way be interpreted as a criticism of the prodigious effort of the trial justice to control this litigation and keep all parties and counsel focused on the legal issues. Despite our vacating of the contempt orders, we continue to have enormous respect for this conscientious and scholarly trial justice.