Court Opinion

ID: 9466569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:19:51.531687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:48.580849
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent.
The issue before us is whether the district court erroneously directed a verdict for the defendants. The district court’s action cannot be sustained unless the facts and inferences point so strongly and overwhelmingly in favor of one party that reasonable jurors could not arrive at a contrary verdict. Boeing Company v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365 (5th Cir. 1969) (en banc).
The majority’s very fair statement of the facts indicates to me that the district judge erred in refusing to permit the jury to weigh the evidence. Overall, most favorably to the plaintiff Hatcher, the evidence indicates the collection by the defendant Budget-Car, of an open account indebtedness through the misuse of the criminal process. Without attempting to write or telephone Hatcher through his employer (whose address or telephone number were shown on the application forms), Budget-Car filed criminal charges against Hatcher when its letter to his residence was returned due to clerical error by Budget-Car’s employees in copying the address. As a result of the criminal charges, Hatcher was arrested at the Chicago Airport when he returned to the United States, held in jail for two days, and not released from the charge until he paid the open-account due to Budget-Car. The arrest for felony theft, the jury might well infer, has caused grave damage in the employment prospects of the plaintiff, a responsible professional.
The crime with which Hatcher was charged was theft by “intentionally or knowingly ” securing performance of a service “by deception, threat, or false token.” Texas Penal Code § 31.04(a)(1) (Vernon 1974). As the majority’s statement of the facts shows, Hatcher did not obtain possession of Budget-Car’s rental car or avoid payment for it by any “deception, threat or false token.” The majority does not find otherwise, or that any crime was in fact committed by Hatcher.1
*96The majority nevertheless finds no evidence from which the jury might find that the creditor Budget-Car “falsely” accused Hatcher of the crime (which concededly he did not commit), an essential for Hatcher’s recovery under the Texas wrongful debt collection statute upon which this diversity action is based.
The error in this supposition is that, as the majority notes, “No evidence at trial indicates that Woodfin [Budget-Car’s employee] told the district attorney about the incident.” However, the jury might well suppose that, if Woodfin had told the facts truly, the district attorney (presumed to act correctly and in accordance with law) would not have charged Hatcher with a crime, for Hatcher did not (under the facts accepted by the majority as correct) intentionally secure the rental car and avoid payment for it by any “deception, threat or false token,” as required by the Texas penal code provision. The jury might well suppose, as seems to be probable upon the defendant’s arguments before us, that Woodfin might, instead of the true facts, have misinformed the district attorney, for instance, that Hatcher had given a false address (see footnote 1).
It is true that, had directed verdict not been granted at the close of the plaintiff’s case, the defendant might have explained to the jury’s satisfaction the inference otherwise arising that the district attorney incorrectly charged Hatcher with a crime, when no crime had been committed but at most a creditor-debtor misunderstanding over payment of an open account due. But, contrary to Boeing Company v. Shipman, the plaintiff was deprived of his opportunity to have the jury assess the evidence which gives rise to conflicting inferences, one of which to me in the present state of the record is that Budget-Car falsely filed a criminal charge against Hatcher, who had committed no crime, simply in order wrongfully to use the criminal process to collect the debt due it.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. The majority correctly rejects, as frivolous, the defendants’s argument that the plaintiff Hatcher erroneously gave a false address; a clerical error by the defendant’s employees is shown as the cause of the mistake. Nor does the majority place any weight on the defendant’s suggestion that Hatcher rented the car intending to keep it beyond the date upon which he stated he would return it; as a recurrent practice, the defendant permitted its customers to turn the vehicles in later than the date, without complaint.