Court Opinion

ID: 9446536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:57:52.344136+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:41.583818
License: Public Domain

CAMERON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am unable to agree with the majority opinion in its holding that Barge, the disgruntled former employee of appellants, could testify over the repeated objection of appellants to a conversation had between Barge, Koonce and Atwood in a hotel room some days after the letter the majority opinion describes as containing fantastic demands had been written. The situation is not changed by the majority description of Koonce as sales manager and one who was acquiring a working interest in the appellants’ business by leaving his earnings in the business instead of drawing them out. The appellants, Hal Fulenwider, Jr. and Marion Fulenwider, were sued as individuals and co-partners and the verdict was rendered and the judgment entered against them as such. Whatever his authority, Koonce was nothing more than an agent, and the conversation related to actions which had already been taken. The conversation took place in a hotel room at a time when no business of the partnership was being transacted, but when the participants were engaged in idle bragging and gossip about the letter which had already been written.
Appellee had placed Koonce upon the stand and asked only a few questions, all relating to whether he had made certain statements to Barge in the conversation referred to. Barge was permitted by deposition already taken to relate all of the details of what he, Koonce and Atwood had said in the hotel conversation.1 It is clear to me that these casual statements made by one agent of appellants, individuals, to other agents was not admissible evidence. The majority opinion seems to invest what was said by Koonce with some sort of special status. The Supreme Court has ruled that declarations made under like circumstances by the president of a banking corporation were inadmissible, Goetz v. Bank of Kansas City, 119 U.S. 551, 560, 7 S.Ct. 318, 323, 30 L.Ed. 515:
“The testimony of one of the plaintiffs and of one of his attorneys was offered as to declarations of the president of the bank, made several days after the last draft had been discounted, to the effect that the bank had become largely involved in certain wool transactions with DuBois as early as July or August, 1881, and would have broken off its relations with him if it had not been that this wool matter remained un*102settled. The testimony was excluded, and rightly so. The declarations had no bearing upon the good faith of the officers of the bank in the transactions in this case; and if they had, being made some days after those transactions, they were not admissible as part of the res gestae any more than if made by a stranger. Evidence of declarations of an agent as to past transactions of his principal are inadmissible, as mere hearsay.”2
Appellee sought to weave into the texture of the case, subtly and otherwise, that Koonce, Barge and Atwood collaborated with appellant Fulenwider in the effort to discover or manufacture grounds and methods for discharging Wheeler, and this aspect of the case necessarily loomed large in the minds of the jurors. Barge’s testimony as to statements made in the hotel conversation tended to invest all of appellants’ dealings with Wheeler with a taint of fraud. It is patent that appellee placed Koonce upon the stand merely to place in the record a denial of the statements to Barge so that the deposition of Barge already taken could be offered in evidence. It is not permitted, in my opinion, that a litigant thus set up a man of straw in order that he may proceed to destroy him. Such is the import of a long line of cases from this Court.2
3 The atmosphere, largely contributed to by this portion of the Barge deposition, made it highly improbable, in my opinion, that the jury could try the case fairly and reach a conclusion which was not the product of passion.
My disagreement extends also to the holding of the majority opinion as to appellants’ third specification of error based upon the claim that the trial court erred in denying their motion under Rule 60(b), F.R.C.P. to vacate the judgment and grant a new trial. Appellants had filed a motion for new trial under Rule 59, and their appeal notices covered the adverse orders entered by the court below on both motions.
With the motion under Rule 60 (b) was filed the affidavit of appellant Marion Fulenwider that the final judgment was obtained by fraud in that plaintiff, ap-pellee, had procured and placed before the court testimony of Claude Barge which was false, untrue and inaccurate. Exhibited with the motion was an affidavit executed by Barge in New York City November 20th setting forth that Wheeler had promised to pay him $10,-000 if he won his suit and on condition that Barge give false testimony and procure the assistance of two other former employees of appellants. The affidavit showed definitely that a number of answers given by Barge on vital subjects were false and were known by Wheeler to be false when he used them in evidence in the case. The trial court denied the motion “without prejudice to the defendants to proceed by independent action as otherwise provided by rule and statute.”
Normally, of course, the granting of a new trial, and probably the vacating of a judgment under Rule 60(b), rests within the sound discretion of the trial judge. The Rule is a good one and should be applied unless the circumstances are ex*103ceptional. But we have never looked upon it as a fetish requiring unvarying fealty in the face of fact and reality. Cf. Prudential Insurance Co. v. Gilroy, 5 Cir., 1946, 154 F.2d 382; Commercial Credit Corp. v. Pepper, 5 Cir., 1951, 187 F.2d 71; Ferrell v. Trailmobile, Inc., 5 Cir., 1955, 223 F.2d 697; Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Floyd, 5 Cir., 1957, 249 F.2d 396; Whiteman v. Pitrie, 5 Cir., 1955, 220 F.2d 914, 920 et seq., and Sunray Oil Corp. v. Allbritton, 5 Cir., 1951, 188 F.2d 751.
The rule announced by the cases cited in the majority opinion is based upon the assumption that the trial court has at least heard the recanting witness testify at the trial, and has obtained the “feel” of the case so that it is in much better position than we could possibly be to decide whether the recanter told the truth when he gave his testimony or in his recantation. The principles governing such cases is very much the same as those applied under the “clearly erroneous” doctrine established by Rule 52 F.R.C.P.
In both instances the rule vesting such a controlling measure of discretion with the trial judge is greatly relaxed where he did not have the advantage of seeing the witnesses testify. This Court pointed out the relative weights attaching to such findings in Galena Oaks Corp. v. Scofield, 1954, 218 F.2d 217, 219, and the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently reviewed the authorities and reached the conclusion that, in all of the circuits, the rule was followed that the appellate court would not accept the findings of a trial judge as final unless he had better opportunity of judging the credibility of the witnesses than the appellate court. Seagrave Corp. v. Mount, 1954, 212 F.2d 389. And cf. 5 Moore’s Federal Practice, Second Edition, p. 2637 et seq. and the authorities there discussed.
In this case the trial court had before it only the deposition of Barge and his recanting affidavit, both of which are before us. Whether the affidavit presents enough of substance to support an order under Rule 60 is, therefore, a question of law. Where, as here, such serious charges are made I think the court below should have vacated the judgment and granted a new trial in which Barge could be compelled to testify either by deposition or attendance upon the trial. His evidence is, in my opinion, too important to be left in the realm of doubt, as is done in the record before us. For these reasons I respectfully dissent.
Rehearing denied: CAMERON, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

. A few quotations will show tho crucial importance of Barge’s testimony concerning this conversation:
“He [referring to appellee Wheeler] wouldn’t go out and work like that. I says, ‘He’s sort of a celebrity; in his field he is kind of like Bob Hope * * in the movie field.’ I says ‘Wheeler is similar to him in his sales — knowledge in the sales field. * * * He’s a celebrity. * * * It would just be a slap in the face.’ And Koonce agreed with me on that. But he still thought Wheeler would show up and work.
*****
“ * * * That’s when he [referring to Koonce] said they was carrying him to West Palm Beach to rake him over the coals. He said Wheeler thought he was coming down there for a little fun, but he was going to find out there was no fun to it. In other words, they gave the attitude they was getting tough with Wheeler.
*****
«* * * jack [Koonce] said that Hal was going to allow him to go home I believe one day for Christmas, but that he wanted him to work on the sales manual while he was there in the peace and comfort of his home where he could concentrate and think. * * * Jack was just telling me that he had talked with Hal over the ’phone and that Hal had written the letter; and that he [Wheeler] was going to have to go on and get his clothes and get packed up and be up there because the only thing he hated about it was that he was going to have to work with the S.B. That’s the exact words he used. Of course, it was just a matter of talking — which is very commonly done with people sitting around talking.”

. And see to the same effect 20 American Jurisprudence, Evidence, § 599, pp. 510-511; Restatement of the Law of Agency, §§ 286 et seq.; IV Wigmore on Evidence, Third Edition, § 1048 and § 1068 et seq. And cf. Jacksonville Paper Co. v. N. L. R. B., 5 Cir., 1943, 137 F.2d 148; Barclay v. Howell’s Lessee, 6 Pet. 498, 31 U.S. 498, 8 L.Ed. 477; Union Packet Co. v. Clough, 20 Wall. 528, 87 U.S. 528, 22 L.Ed. 406; American Life Ins. Co. v. Mahone, 21 Wall. 152, 88 U.S. 152, 22 L.Ed. 593; Vicksburg & M. R. Co. v. O’Brien, 119 U.S. 99, 7 S.Ct. 118, 30 L.Ed. 299; Marchand v. Griffon, 140 U.S. 516, 11 S.Ct. 834, 35 L.Ed. 527; and Perper v. Sonnabend, 5 Cir., 1955, 221 F.2d 142.
The authorities cited in the majority opinion do not, in my view, sustain its holding.

. E. g., Georgia Casualty Co. v. Waldman, 5 Cir., 1931, 53 F.2d 24, 26; Ward v. United States, 5 Cir., 1938, 96 F.2d 189, 192, and Young v. United States, 5 Cir., 1938, 97 F.2d 200, 117 A.L.R. 316.