Tiller v. Baghdady
| Citation | 244 F.3d 9 |
| Decision Date | 02 October 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 00-1131,No. 00-1261,00-1131,00-1261 |
| Parties | (1st Cir. 2001) GEORGETTE BAGHDADY TILLER, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. SAMI J. BAGHDADY, Defendant, Appellee. & Heard |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit) |
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Joseph L. Tauro, U.S. District Judge]
Donald R. Furman, Jr. for appellant.
Gael Mahony, with whom John D. Lawrence and Hill & Barlow were on brief for appellee.
Before Torruella, Chief Judge, Lynch and Lipez, Circuit Judges.
This unhappy case pits brother against sister. Sami Baghdady, a property developer in Massachusetts, allegedly used money from the sale of his sisters' Teledyne stock to purchase land for the development of a residential apartments complex in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1971. One of the sisters, Georgette Tiller, sued Baghdady on several theories, contending that she was promised a partnership interest in the apartments project, which she never received. The jury rejected her claim of intentional misrepresentation, the only claim that the court permitted the jury to consider.
In this appeal, Tiller argues that the trial court erred in excluding evidence about Baghdady's disposition of the stock of his other sister, Violette Haddad. She claims that this evidence would have undermined Baghdady's credibility, leading the jury to accept her version of the events and reject his. Tiller also challenges the trial court's decision to grant Baghdady's motion for judgment as a matter of law on her claims for breach of an oral contract and negligent misrepresentation.
Although we agree that the court erred in its evidentiary ruling, that error was harmless. We therefore affirm.
The Baghdadys are an entrepreneurial family, at one time or another pursuing business ventures on three continents. Sami Baghdady is involved in business investments in the Northeastern United States. For years, Georgette Tiller owned and managed a cosmetics merchandise and bakery business with her sister, Violette Haddad, in Lebanon and locations in Africa. Into the 1980s, Tiller was also responsible for management of a family-owned apartment building in Beirut, and she continues to own real estate in Lebanon. Both Tiller and Haddad now live in the United States. A fourth sibling, George Baghdady, lives in Connecticut.
In 1961, all of the family members invested in a company called ADCOM, which was then run by a family member. When that company was sold in 1967, Baghdady coordinated the swapping of shares for interests in Teledyne, Inc. At the time, Tiller and Haddad were living in Lebanon and the family decided that the stock certificates might not be secure in Beirut. Baghdady agreed to hold them for safekeeping. According to her testimony, Tiller gave explicit instructions to Baghdady regarding the Teledyne stock: Still, Tiller and Haddad executed Powers of Attorney in August 1970, giving Baghdady the authority to manage their investments through the brokerage firm Bache & Company.
Baghdady's and Tiller's accounts diverge on the circumstances of the Teledyne stock sale, as well as the understanding that they reached following the sale. Tiller says that in April 1971, acting pursuant to the powers of attorney, Baghdady sold his sisters' and his own Teledyne shares without notifying them. When Tiller first learned that the shares had been sold in the summer of 1971, during a visit to the United States, she was furious. Tiller says that she asked Baghdady to repurchase the stock, but he replied that he no longer had the money to do so. She further claims that he used the money to purchase the land that would become the Cedar Crest real estate project, a transaction that closed on May 10, 1971. To make amends, Tiller says Baghdady promised to make her and her sister partners in the venture, and he indicated that legal papers would be drafted when he had time. Tiller also acknowledges that following her protest about the sale of her stock, Baghdady executed promissory notes to both Tiller and Haddad on August 4, 1971, just before her return to Lebanon. The note to Tiller stated:
Although no legal documents were forthcoming, Baghdady allegedly persisted in characterizing the relationship with his siblings as a partnership. Tiller reports, and her brother George concurs, that during a tour of the Cedar Crest apartments in 1977 Baghdady hailed the property and said to his siblings, There were supposedly multiple conversations about the lack of partnership papers between 1971 and 1996. Finally, in December 1996 when Tiller demanded the papers, Baghdady responded angrily: "There are no papers, no partnership, nothing."
In his defense, Baghdady says Tiller herself was responsible for the stock sale. He states that he only sold his own Teledyne shares, and deposited their value into one of his savings accounts to help with the purchase of the Arlington property. Baghdady also acknowledges that he deposited the proceeds of Tiller's stock sale into one of his savings accounts, at his sister's request, in mid-summer 1971, long after the property purchase was closed. Baghdady states that when Tiller was returning to Lebanon in August, she told him to keep the stock sale amount as a loan. He assured the repayment in writing, executing the promissory note acknowledged by Tiller at trial, and writing her a check initiating repayment of the loan.
Over the next decade or so, Baghdady paid the balance of the $31,000, plus interest, to Tiller by sending checks, many of them marked "int." or "interest," on almost a monthly basis. The cost of health insurance premiums that Baghdady was covering for Tiller was sometimes deducted from the interest payments. Although Baghdady did not earn a profit on his real estate investment for several years, Tiller received ongoing repayment of the stock proceeds loaned to her brother. Tiller has never received any percentage of earnings from Cedar Crest, and there was no evidence of Tiller taking part in the venture's management.
Tiller filed a diversity action in federal district court on May 12, 1997, charging fraud and intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of oral contract. The 2 1/2 day trial began on December 6, 1999. At the close of the plaintiff's evidence, the court granted Baghdady's motion for judgment as a matter of law on both the negligent misrepresentation and the breach of oral contract claims. At the conclusion of the case, the court submitted only the intentional misrepresentation claim to the jury. The first question on the verdict form read: "Has the plaintiff proved by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant misrepresented to her that she was his partner in the Cedar Crest Apartments development?" The jury responded, "No," obviating the need to answer any further questions. The court entered a judgment for Baghdady.
At trial, the court refused to allow the admission of documents pertaining to the sale of the Teledyne shares of Violette Haddad, Baghdady's other sister. The plaintiff contends that these documents undermined the veracity of Baghdady's claim that he did not use the money from the sisters' stock sale to purchase the land for his real estate project.
The parties first discussed the admissibility of these documents with the judge the morning the trial began, at a conference immediately preceding the arrival of the jury. At this time, Tiller's attorney, Mr. Tariot, noted the discovery just a few days prior to trial of "Notices of Sale" from Bache & Company for Haddad's stock.1 Baghdady's attorney, Mr. Mahony, objected to the admission of the Haddad documents, arguing that they were not relevant to Tiller's claims relating to her own stock. The court was inclined to agree, but Mr. Tariot persisted: "They are relevant, I believe, in that the dates of transactions are from the same brokerage company of the publicly traded shares and occurred on the identical dates in question relative to my client." He added that they are "probative and relevant to some of the checkbook entries [in Baghdady's account] which are in the agreed exhibits, which show sums of money received from Bache & Company and tally out to the penny to the combination of my client's shares and her sister's shares." Tariot then attempted to show how the checkbook entry listing deposits to Baghdady's account represented the sum of Tiller's and Haddad's stock values. The court remained skeptical, focusing instead on the question of "whether [the amount] was a loan or whether [Tiller] bought a piece of an apartment house." Tariot once again explained: "[T]hese documents are probative as to whether [Baghdady] received the sum in April at the time he was negotiating the purchase [of the land], or August." The court disagreed: "If those [notices of sale] don't mention both people [Tiller and Haddad], I don't see how it is probative."2 The court added, however: "If you reach a point where you think that you have laid a foundation, I will revisit it then."
Accepting this offer, Mr. Tariot attempted twice more to gain the admission of Haddad's sale notices. The first effort came during Mr. Tariot's examination of Violette Haddad, after her answers established that Baghdady also sold Haddad's Teledyne stock. The relevant colloquy was as follows:
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