Court Opinion

ID: 9461620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:19:30.758252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:10.320908
License: Public Domain

ALDISERT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Justice Frankfurter would teach us that “[i]n law . . . the right answer usually depends upon putting the right question.” 1 If the question is, as Judge Rosenn states in his opening sentence, “whether the acts of the defendant come within the privilege to interfere with the contractual relations of a competitor,” much leeway is provided to frame the answer. If, as stated nine paragraphs later by Judge Rosenn, “[t]he question on this appeal is whether the plaintiff adduced sufficient evidence to support the jury’s finding of an absence of privilege,” the parameters for furnishing the answer are severely circumscribed. I am in complete agreement with the latter statement of the issue before us. Thus, the function of this reviewing court is simply to evaluate the quantum of evidence.
The jury has found the facts contrary to the defendant’s contention. Therefore, I cannot begin to characterize plaintiff as a “wayward agent” or a “double agent” being “engaged duplici-tously” “who has subverted his duties and obligations to his principal.” 2 These characterizations sound more like the felicitous phrasings of a defense counsel’s closing argument to a jury, than a dispassionate account of facts found in favor of the plaintiff. And, as properly stated by Judge Rosenn, the evidence must be considered “in the light most favorable to plaintiff, drawing all rea*1079sonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant.”3
Plaintiff presented evidence that:
1. He was an independent contractor of defendant, and that the employment agreement provided: “Nothing contained herein shall be construed to create the relationship of employer and employee ..” Appendix at 23a, 233a.
2. Notwithstanding an exclusivity provision in agency agreements, there was a custom of Equitable agents “brokering out” cases to other companies.
3. For a period of months plaintiff solicited Manganas for a $1,000,000 life insurance policy, eventually offering him a choice between policies issued by the defendant company and Jefferson.
4. Manganas conferred with his accountant and his lawyer who advised that the Jefferson Standard policy better suited his needs.
5. Manganas chose the Jefferson Standard policy, relying on the advice of his accountant and lawyer, “more likely [the advice of his] attorney.” Ibid, at 93a.
6. Manganas wrote a check in the amount of $17,615 and delivered it to plaintiff as an initial partial premium payment for the Jefferson Standard Insurance policy.
7. After the offer and acceptance of the Jefferson Standard Insurance policy, and the delivery of the check to plaintiff, the defendant company’s representative Harrison told Manganas that the Jefferson policy “is going to hurt [him] more than help [him] for the purpose [he] was getting insurance-wise,” ibid, at 95a, and when Manganas told him he had issued a check for it, Harrison told Manganas, “Well, you can cancel the check.” Ibid, at 96a.
8. Manganas cancelled the check, called off the insurance deal, and plaintiff was deprived of the commission.
Thus, I believe sufficient evidence was presented for the jury to determine whether there was a privilege to act, Restatement of Torts § 767 (1939), and whether the “actor’s conduct [was] justifiable under the circumstances.” Ibid., Comment a. The jury was required to decide whether the “relation concern[ed] a matter involved in the competition between the actor and the competitor.” Ibid., § 768(1)(a). Specifically, they had to decide:
1. The nature of the actor’s [Harrison’s] conduct, ibid., § 767(a); and
2. Whether the competition between Jefferson and Equitable was still ongoing' or had terminated upon the offer and acceptance of the Jefferson contract by Manganas. See ibid., § 767(c) and Comment d.4
The jury obviously found that the competition had ceased and that the relation did not concern a matter involved in competition. The majority, however, would nullify the jury’s fact findings and substitute their findings of fact couched in terms of a legal principle as to “whether the act- or’s conduct is justifiable under the circumstances.” The incongruity of the majority position is manifest. The majority hold: “the privilege to compete is not terminated when the contract with the competitor is the direct product of an agent’s breach of duty to his principal. The sanctity of the later contract may not be preserved at the expense of the breach of the first.”5 But for the breach of the first, there would be no competition to give rise to the claimed privilege. Thus, the majority sanction the breach of the first to give rise to the privilege, but condemn the breach of the first when the resulting competition culminates in a contract ending the competition.
*1080Denying plaintiff recovery as a matter of Pennsylvania law runs counter to the current approach to tort liability in that state. What was said in Quinones v. United States, 492 F.2d 1269, 1278-79 (3d Cir. 1974), is also appropriate here. “In recent years we have witnessed rapid, if not revolutionary, development in judge-made tort law by Pennsylvania courts . . . expanding and not contracting liability of defendants and increasing recoveries for plaintiffs. Thus there is nothing in principle, nor precedent, nor manifest in the contemporary jurisprudential philosophy of Pennsylvania courts which would tend to foreclose plaintiff’s course of action in this case.”
Moreover, intrusion into the jury’s province runs counter to the spirit, if not the letter, of federal procedures. “The federal system is an independent system for administering justice to litigants who properly invoke its jurisdiction. An essential characteristic of that system is the manner in which, in civil common-law actions, it distributes trial functions between judge and jury and, under the influence — if not the command — of the Seventh Amendment, assigns the decisions of disputed questions of fact to the jury.” Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc., 356 U.S. 525, 537, 78 S.Ct. 893, 901, 2 L.Ed.2d 953 (1958) (footnote omitted).
A subordinate issue injected by the majority su a sponte after the original briefing by the parties was whether, as a matter of law, plaintiff was “in direct violation of his written agency contract with Equitable” not to broker out insurance with other companies.6 At trial, time and again, the insurance company successfully resisted plaintiff’s efforts to introduce evidence of a custom in the insurance industry for agents operating under a “prior right” clause of an agency contract to broker business with other companies. But evidence of this custom eventually became part of the record.
As set forth in appellant’s supplemental brief, plaintiff attempted to show custom, and ostensibly waiver, by Equitable of the exclusivity provisions of the agency contract. If the “prior right” of plaintiff’s agency contract is relevant— and Judges Rosenn and Kalodner think so — then it was the plaintiff, not the appellant, who was harmed by trial court rulings. He sought to show by extrinsic evidence that it was customary for agents with this type of contract to broker insurance to other companies. If this were accompanied by proof of knowledge by appellant, a factual issue of waiver by the appellant would have been joined properly for jury consideration under proper instructions by the court.
I cannot subscribe to Judge Kalodner’s attempt to remove this issue from the jury by applying strictures of the Pennsylvania parol evidence rule to Restatement of Contracts § 576. The purpose of the parol evidence here was not to “vary” the terms of the contract. Universal Film Exchanges, Inc. v. Viking Theatre Corp., 400 Pa. 27, 161 A.2d 610 (1960). Rather, it was to show that a provision of a written contract had been abandoned by waiver. As Justice Mus-manno colorfully expressed this principle in Wagner v. Graziano Construction Co., 390 Pa. 445, 448, 136 A.2d 82, 84 (1957): “Even where the contract specifically states that no non-written modification will be recognized, the parties may yet alter their agreement by parol negotiation. The hand that pens a writing may not gag the mouths of the assenting parties.” See also Simons v. Safety Mut. Fire Ins. Co. of Lebanon, 277 Pa. 200, 203, 120 A. 822, 823 (1923); Achenbach v. Stoddard, 253 Pa. 338, 343, 98 A. 604, 605 (1916); Grove v. Donaldson, 15 Pa. 128, 136-37 (1850); De Long Hook & Eye Co. v. Tait, 108 Pa. Super. 369, 373, 164 A. 848, 849 (1933); 14 Pa.L.Encycl., Evidence § 291, at 632-33 (1959).
I would affirm the judgment of the district court.

. Rogers v. Commissioner, 320 U.S. 410, 413, 64 S.Ct. 172, 174, 88 L.Ed. 134 (1943).

. Opinion of Rosenn, J., at 1077.

. Ibid, at 1074.

. “A may be privileged to induce B not to deal with C, A’s competitor, and be unprivileged to induce him in the same way not to deal with D who is not a competitor.” Restatement of Torts § 767, Comment d, at 69 (1939).

. Opinion of Rosenn, J., at 1077.

. Ibid, at 1075.