Court Opinion

ID: 9637306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:02:52.345079+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:57.846949
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
If the typewritten manuscript, which ap-pellee proffered as Exhibit 5, with its sealed wrapper missing, was, without alteration or substitution of pages, the copy of her book which she mailed to herself in 1937 under post office registration and seal, then I do not feel able to say that the trial court’s findings on authorship, access and copying are clearly erroneous.
The similarities between appellant’s film production and appellee’s alleged ■ book, in scenes, characters and incidents, are so many and substantial that I think the trial court could properly conclude that general coincidence was not a natural and satisfying explanation for them and that, with no common extraneous source shown, one must have copied from the other. The published opinion of the trial court, D.C., 54 F.Supp. 425, sets out the cumulative similarities, and I shall not recount them here.
My concept of the legal principles which the trial court was at liberty to apply to *901the general situation can be simply stated. Access inherently is a sine qua non of copying, but proof of access, like other legal facts, may competently rest on circumstantial evidence and rational inference from it. Substantial similarities are always competent evidence of both access and copying. Ordinarily the question is merely as to the weight of the inference from the similarities, in comparison with the direct evidence of non-access and non-copying. That question generally is for the trier of the fact, unless the similarities are so insubstantial as rationally to be incapable of affording the basis for an inference. The right to apply these principles to substantial similarities is absolute where coincidence is not on its face a natural and satisfying explanation for them, where no extraneous source is shown as their common basis, and where all possibility of access is not excluded by the physical facts under the tests of general knowledge and experience.
I have indicated that in my opinion the similarities here were such in number and character that coincidence was not on its face a natural and satisfying explanation for them. Nor was any extraneous source shown as their common basis. And all possibility of access was not excluded by the physical facts under the tests of general knowledge and experience. As the trial court’s opinion observed, 54 F.Supp. at page 427, during the period that appellant’s movie script was in process of preparation at its studio, appellee’s book was in Hollywood, in the hands of a literary agent and critic, whose staff had access to it; and another critic to whom the book previously had been submitted, and who, according to appellee, had suggested that it could be used as a vehicle for Irving Berlin’s songs, was then also located in Hollywood. The court did not purport to declare that access had been obtained through one of these sources but only held that, since all possibility of access had not been excluded, the numerous and substantial similarities could properly be used to infer access as a general legal fact.
I qualified my initial statement that ,the trial court’s findings on authorship, access and copying could not be said to be clearly erroneous, with the proviso, if the typewritten manuscript, which appellee proffered as Exhibit 5, with its sealed wrapper missing, was, without alteration or substitution of pages, the copy of her book which she mailed to herself in 1937 under post office registration and seal. On the question implied by the proviso, I think the trial court should have granted appellant’s motion to reopen the case.
Appellant’s motion to reopen was made ■after the case was submitted but before findings had been filed and judgment had been entered. It charged that some of ¡the exhibits which appellee had proffered, including Exhibit 5, were altered documents and that a fraud thus had been perpetrated on both the court and appellant. As to Exhibit 5, the attempt was to show that it had not been kept under its original post office seal and that its similarities with appellant’s film production were due to alterations and substitutions which appellee had made after she had seen appellant’s movie in 1938. A year before the trial appellee had brought Exhibit 5 into court purportedly under its original post office seal, but no one at that time apparently had any thought that the seal might have been broken and replaced Appellant had asked, however, that the wrapper be preserved, but on the trial ap-pellee claimed that it had been lost or destroyed. There were other circumstances also that on their face invited proper explanation. Counsel for appellee conceded that the showing was such that the situation “needs decidedly to be explained”, but he made most of the explanation by mere statement in oral argument against the motion and not by conventional legal standards. I think the trial court should have explored the issue on its merits and made resolution of it by regular findings of fact.
I would reverse the judgment and remand the case for trial and findings on the issue of possible fraud. I have the frustrating feeling that there is something in the situation that has not been entirely reached. Certainly, if appellee has altered Exhibit 5 since seeing appellant’s movie, or has in any other material way attempted to deceive the court in the situation, she is not entitled to the judgment which she has received at the court’s hands. If on a trial of the issue, the court shall find that she has not been guilty of fraud, then it may in its wisdom reenter the previous judgment.