Court Opinion

ID: 2966082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2015-09-21 21:48:35.690148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:43:08.551341
License: Public Domain

USCA1 Opinion

	

                 United States Court of Appeals
                     For the First Circuit

No. 98-2126

                     SAMOS IMEX CORPORATION,

                      Plaintiff, Appellant,

                                v.

                   NEXTEL COMMUNICATIONS, INC.,

                       Defendant, Appellee,

                                v.

              BROOK HILL ENTERPRISES, INC., ET AL.,

                     Third-Party Defendants.

           APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

                FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

           [Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]

                              Before

                     Boudin, Circuit Judge,
                   Cyr, Senior Circuit Judge,
                   and Lynch, Circuit Judge.
                                
                                
                                
                                
     Herbert Abrams with whom Barry C. Klickstein and Abrams,
Roberts, Klickstein & Levy were on brief for appellant.
     Maia Aparo Moran with whom F.J. McDonald and Law Offices of
F.J. McDonald were on brief for appellee.

October 26, 1999

                                
                                
  BOUDIN, Circuit Judge.  In June 1997, plaintiff-appellant
Samos Imex Corporation sued Nextel Communications, Inc. in the
federal district court in Massachusetts.  The gist of the complaint
was that in 1995, Nextel had constructed an antenna or "monopole,"
over 100 feet high, within several feet of a building leased and
occupied by Samos Imex under a lease that required Samos Imex to
make repairs to the building.  Samos Imex claimed that the antenna,
which itself involved subsurface construction, had caused Samos
Imex's building to shift, resulting in structural damage and
rendering its freight elevator inoperative.
  Prior to the suit being filed, John Carota, a structural
engineering expert, gave Samos Imex a report evaluating the
condition of the building, recommending repairs, and identifying
"the probable cause" of the damage to the building and the freight
elevator.  The probable cause section of the report began by
concluding that "[t]he probable cause of the recent movement and
racking [i.e., shifting] [of] this three story brick building . .
. can be directly attributed to the building responding to the
effects of constructing the monopole project."  The report then
identified  various "aspects" of the antenna project that "either
singularly or in combination could have caused the failed elevator
and cracked building support columns and walls."
  This document, which was prepared in advance of the
litigation, was the only disclosure of anticipated expert testimony
made by Samos Imex by the time of the discovery deadline for
plaintiff's expert testimony.  Thereafter, Nextel moved to exclude
Carota's testimony and for summary judgment.  It argued that the
Carota report was not accompanied by other information required by
Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B), such as exhibits to be used at trial
by the expert, a list of his publications, disclosure of
compensation, and a list of other cases in which the expert has
testified within the preceding four years.  In the same motion,
Nextel sought summary judgment on the separate ground that the
report, even if believed, did not establish that the antenna had
more likely than not caused the harm complained of; rather,
according to Nextel, the report dwelt solely in "could haves" and
"possibilities."  
  In August 1998, the district court heard oral argument
and decided the matter from the bench.  It rejected the request to
exclude the engineering report as a sanction for violation of
discovery rules, but it entered summary judgment on the ground that
the report did not purport to establish that "more probably than
not" the antenna construction was the cause of the damage--the
threshold of proof that the court said was inherent in the
preponderance of the evidence standard that generally applies in
civil cases.
  In the hearing, counsel for Samos Imex responded to the
court that Carota would testify that when he used the phrase "the
probable cause" in his report, he meant "more likely than not." 
The court said that it understood the proffer to mean that if
Carota was called to the stand "he would answer that more likely
than not the shifting of the building which caused the elevator to
bind was [caused by] the Nextel pole."  However, the court said
that to accept this proffer as modifying the report would undermine
proper case management and discovery rules and that the report
itself remained "inadequate given the required standard."
  Samos Imex now appeals and, reviewing the grant of
summary judgment de novo, see Cadle Co. v. Hayes, 116 F.3d 957, 960
(1st Cir. 1997), we reverse.  The phrase "probable cause" is used,
in the narrow confines of Fourth Amendment precedent, to establish
a standard less demanding than "more probable than not."  For
example, arrests--made long before all proof is assembled for a
trial--can be justified as based on probable cause by showing a
reasonable basis for belief that a suspect committed a crime; in
many cases such a basis exists without a 50 percent-plus likelihood
that the suspect is guilty.  See, e.g., United States v. Garcia,
179 F.3d 265, 269 (5th Cir. 1999); cf. United States v. Sokolow,
490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989).
  The standard is obviously higher at trial where, in a
civil suit for negligence, the plaintiff must normally show both
fault and causation.  To establish the latter, plaintiff must show
that it is more probable than not that the injury was caused by the
action or event (or a combination of them) for which the defendant
was responsible.  See, e.g., Forlano v. Hughes, 471 N.E.2d 1315,
1319-20 (Mass. 1984); Bigwood v. Boston & N. St. Ry. Co., 95 N.E.2d
751, 752 (Mass. 1911).  And laymen and many judges might easily
refer to such a cause as "the probable cause" of an accident,
meaning that it was the more likely than not cause.
  Words like "probable" and "likely" are highly elastic in
common use, which is why they are often surrounded by other phrases
("more probable than not", "a reasonable likelihood"), that
sometimes lend greater precision and sometimes do not.  When a
magistrate judge speaks of "probable cause" in a suppression
hearing, we assume that he means a reasonable basis sufficient to
satisfy the Fourth Amendment; but if a doctor testified on the
stand that the probable cause of death was a heart attack, he might
be expected to mean that the heart attack was more likely than not
the cause of death.  If the doctor meant only that a heart attack
was merely one possible cause among others, it would be up to the
opposing counsel to draw this out on cross-examination.
  In all events, counsel for the plaintiff made an
immediate proffer that the expert would testify that the monopole
was more likely than not the cause of the injury and that that was
what he had intended by use of the phrase "probable cause" in the
report.  If there were any doubt, it would be easy enough to
conduct a brief deposition of the witness.  It is one thing to
allow counsel to contradict by proffer something the expert said in
the report or to supply a manifest omission; in that event, case
management and discovery concerns would be legitimate objections. 
But it is hard to justify dismissal of a case on summary judgment,
based on what is at worst ambiguous language, in the face of an
explicit proffer by counsel that the witness meant just what many
readers would expect the witness to have intended.
  Admittedly, further in the Carota report he used phrases
like "could have caused" and the like, and Nextel presses this
point on appeal.  But the main use of these phrases, which occur in
the same paragraph as the "probable cause" statement, are actually
references to multiple causes all of which related to the
construction or operation of the antenna and for all of which
Nextel would likely be responsible (absent some further
explanation).  So long as Nextel was responsible for all of the
possible causes, it would not matter whether the precise causal
path could be identified.  See, e.g., Solimene v. B. Grauel & Co.,
507 N.E.2d 662, 667 & n.12 (Mass. 1987); Carey v. General Motors
Corp., 387 Mass. N.E.2d 583, 585-86 (Mass. 1979).
  This is not a case in which the witness mouths the proper
conclusion but the detailed explanation in his report or proffered
testimony clearly contradicts or provides no arguable foundation
for the conclusion.  See, e.g., Colantuonis v. Alfred Calcagni &
Sons, Inc., 44 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1994).  Nor does this appear to
be a case in which the expert was talking generally about why
buildings collapse without reaching a conclusion as to why this
specific building had shifted; on the contrary, the pivotal
sentence in the probable cause section of the report (quoted above)
spoke of "the probable cause" of the shifting of "this three-story
brick building."  Nextel was free to depose Carota to clarify his
"could have" references, but it was not entitled to summary
judgment on the present state of the record. 
  Nextel asks us to affirm the district court's decision on
a distinct "alternative" ground, namely, the alleged failure of
Nextel to comply with discovery rules by furnishing required
information about the expert.  At one point in the transcript the
district court appears squarely to have rejected such a claim of
violation as the basis for excluding Carota's testimony, hardly a
choice comprising a patent abuse of discretion.  In effect, Nextel
is asking us to conclude that there was a violation of the
discovery rules and that it was of such a character as to compel
the district court to exclude the report as a sanction for this
violation.
  It is quite true that as amended, the civil procedure
rules make clear that exclusion of evidence is a standard sanction
for a violation of duty of disclosure under Rule 26(a).  See Fed.
R. Civ. P. 37(c); Klonoski v. Mahlab, 156 F.3d 255 (1st Cir. 1998). 
But this is far from saying that the district court is obligated to
exclude evidence based on a failure, long before trial and likely
subject to correction without much harm to the opposing party; nor
do we know whether there may be some "justification" for any
failure to disclose.  See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c).  In all events, on
remand the district court is free to enforce its discovery rules by
ordering compliance, sanctions, or any other appropriate remedy.
  We have no bias whatever against summary judgment or
against opinions from the bench, both of which are often marks of
efficient management.  But where a building incurs harm after
significant nearby construction and an expert calls the
construction "the probable cause," we think that more is needed to
support summary judgment than an easily resolved doubt as to
whether the expert meant "more probable than not."  There may well
be more to the story, but we can only act on what the record
discloses.  Nothing precludes a renewed motion for summary judgment
if and when Carota is deposed.
  The judgment of the district court is reversed and the
matter remanded for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
  It is so ordered.