Conjugal Partnership v. Conjugal Partnership

• Decision Date: 29 June 1992
• Docket Number: No. Civ. A. 90-1051(G).,Civ. A. 90-1051(G).
• Citation: 798 F. Supp. 892
• Parties: CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP COMPRISED BY JOSEPH JONES, VERNETTA G. JONES H/N/C, STENOGRAPH SYSTEMS, Plaintiff, v. The CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP COMPRISED BY ARTHUR PINEDA AND TONI PINEDA, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

798 F. Supp. 892

CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP COMPRISED BY JOSEPH JONES, VERNETTA G. JONES H/N/C, STENOGRAPH SYSTEMS, Plaintiff, v. The CONJUGAL PARTNERSHIP COMPRISED BY ARTHUR PINEDA AND TONI PINEDA, Defendant.

No. Civ. A. 90-1051(G).

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

June 29, 1992.

Ismael E. Marrero, Hato Rey, P.R., for plaintiff.

Ramón E. Rivera Muñoz, Jiménez, Graffam & Lausell, San Juan, P.R., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

GARRITY, District Judge.

A jury trial in this breach of contract case ended with a $225,000 verdict for plaintiffs, and defendants have filed a Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law or in the Alternative a Motion for a New Trial pursuant to Rules 50 and 59, Fed.R.Civ.P. The prayer for relief in defendants' reply brief adds a second alternative, which we adopt for reasons which follow, of a remittitur reducing the amount of the judgment. Suit having been brought initially in the Superior Court for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, removal jurisdiction is predicated on 28 U.S.C. § 1442(a)(3) governing actions against "Any officer of the courts of the United States, for any act under color of office or in the performance of his duties", as explained in an Opinion and Order in this case dated March 26, 1990, 734 F.Supp. 41.¹ Defendants' pending motion was briefed by both parties²; neither requested a hearing.

Introduction

The dispute between the parties, both court reporters, pertains to the division of compensation totalling $465,787 received by defendant Arthur Pineda for producing the stenographic transcript of the protracted Dupont Plaza Hotel fire litigation before Hon. Raymond L. Acosta, in whose session Mr. Pineda was the official court reporter appointed by the court under 28 U.C.A. § 753. Plaintiffs are a conjugal partnership comprising Joseph Jones and his wife Vernetta, known also as Stenograph Systems, Inc. Defendants are a conjugal partnership comprising Arthur Pineda and his wife Toni. In both partnerships,³ the husband goes to court and records the proceedings and the wife assists his preparation of the computerized transcript by note reading and "scoping," i.e., removing excess words, correcting misspellings and the like before final proof-reading. For over 20 years before the beginning of the Dupont fire trial in March 1989, plaintiff Jones had been a free lance court reporter and instructor of stenotyping in New York state. He came to Puerto Rico in March, 1982 at the suggestion of a federal judge in New York whom Hon. Jose Antonio Fuste had asked to help recruit a court reporter to serve as the official reporter for his session, in which a five-month trial of complex litigation known as the U.S.I. Properties case was about to begin. Judge Fuste and Jones agreed to and fulfilled a one-year commitment. Defendant Pineda was appointed official reporter by Judge Acosta soon after the judge entered on duty in 1982 and has served continuously in that capacity. Pineda had been the reporter for the session of Judge Pesquera, whom Judge Acosta succeeded.

The Dupont Plaza litigation arose out of a conflagration at a Puerto Rico hotel in which nearly 100 lives were lost, resulting in a multiplicity of large claims for damages by 2,337 plaintiffs against many defendants on various theories of liability. The case was drawn to Judge Acosta, who presided at numerous pretrial conferences and hearings and, for purposes of trial management, subdivided the trial into various phases. Trial commenced in March, 1989. The last final judgment has not yet been entered. Pretrial hearings were held in the former federal courthouse in Old San Juan. However, the facilities there were inadequate to accommodate the crowds of litigants, attorneys and witnesses; so the mezzanine of the Citibank Building in Hato Rey was converted to a courtroom and related quarters. The Dupont trial started there and phases I and II were completed there. While phase III was in progress, the federal courthouse in Hato Rey was opened and the trial moved to the new building. Phase I began on March 15, 1989 and ended on May 12, 1989. Phase II began on June 27, 1989. Daily copy of the Dupont litigation, i.e., a transcript of the previous day's proceedings, was marketed by the defendants under an arrangement with a private office established by the Court for that and other purposes called the Joint Document Depository, of which a Ms. Foulds was the administrator. This office relieved the defendant of the burden of ever dealing directly with the attorneys and others desiring copies, by making copies of the transcript received from Pineda at the end of each trial day and distributing them to persons who had ordered them from Ms. Foulds. The Depository paid Pineda on a weekly basis, issuing seven checks from March 29 to May 18, 1989 for phase I transcripts totalling $112,082.75. Subsequent Depository checks payable to him previous to the trial of the instant case totalled $353,704.00, for a grand total of $465,787.75.

Computerized stenotyping, as practiced by the parties, is a far cry from the traditional, sometimes hand-crippling method of court reporting in which court reporters recorded testimony in shorthand and returned to their offices to type up their notes. In recent years, stenotype machines have been designed whose product can be fed into, or "dumped", into a computer with an attached printer which automatically translates the stenotyped characters or symbols into intelligible language. A change in the method of dumping employed by Jones and Pineda in the Dupont litigation turned out to be relevant to their dispute, as follows: during the pre-trial hearings and phase I, Jones and Pineda alternated every half hour or so and brought the tapes from the courtroom to the room in which the computer-printer was located and dumped them into the computer manually. At some time before the end of phase I, the parties conceived a way of avoiding the dumping process by running a telephonic or similar cable, with appropriate capacity and booster circuits, directly from the stenotype machines in the courtroom to the computer. This improvement would expedite preparation of transcripts by eliminating the time consuming dumping process. In addition, plaintiff contends, it enabled the defendant to dispense with plaintiff's services and motivated his breaching their contract.

Court reporting of federal trials is governed by statute, a Court Reporters' Manual promulgated by the Administrative Office of United States Courts ("AO") and plans adopted by court order. Title 28 U.S.C. § 753(b) provides in relevant part,

(b) Each session of the court and every other proceeding designated by rule or order of the court or by one of the judges shall be recorded verbatim by shorthand, mechanical means, electronic sound recording, or any other method, subject to regulations promulgated by the Judicial Conference and subject to the discretion and approval of the judge.

The AO Manual defines seven categories of court reporters, the first of which describes defendant Pineda:

1. Official Staff Reporters.

These reporters are official, salaried employees of the court appointed by the court for an indefinite term pursuant to the authority of the Judicial Conference.

The seventh category is:

7. Substitute Reporters.

These reporters are employees of an official staff, additional, temporary, or combined position court reporter and are paid by the employing court reporter. An oath must be administered to all substitute reporters⁴.

A Plan for the Effective Utilization of Court Reporters was adopted in 1983 by the United States Court for the District of Puerto Rico and contains the following provision regarding daily copy:

7. Production of Daily Transcript

Production of daily or hourly transcript is not to be subsidized by the Court. A court reporter receiving a request for daily copy shall immediately notify the Clerk of the Court. If extra reporters are required to provide such transcript, the cost of such reporters shall be paid by the official reporter out of the earnings derived from the higher (for daily copy) transcript rates as established by the Judicial Conference.

Motion for Judgment

Defendant's motion for judgment as a matter of law is a renewal of defense motions heard during and at the conclusion of the evidence at the trial. The grounds now urged by the defendant were all submitted previously. Cf. Martinez Moll v. Levitt & Sons of Puerto Rico, Inc., 583 F.2d 565, 568 (1st Cir.1978). By amendment effective December 1, 1991 the terminology of Rule 50(b), Fed.R.Civ.P., was changed; but the well-established legal standard for deciding motions formerly called motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict remains the same, as follows:

Simply stated, it is whether the evidence is such that, without weighing the credibility of the witnesses or otherwise considering the weight of the evidence, there can be but one conclusion as to the verdict that reasonable men could have reached.

9 Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure: § 2524 (1971), at 545-6, quoting Simblest v. Maynard, 427 F.2d 1, 4 (2d Cir.1970). The court must view the evidence most favorably to the verdict winner, here the plaintiff, against whom the motion is made and give that party the benefit of all reasonable inferences from the evidence. Chedd-Angier Production v. Omni Publications, Int., 756 F.2d 930, 934 (1st Cir.1985). The decisive question is, could a reasonable jury, properly instructed in the law,⁵ have arrived at the conclusion actually reached? See Insurance Co. of North America v. Musa, 785 F.2d 370, 372 (1st Cir.1986). The Court may grant a judgment as a matter of law only if it finds that the evidence could lead a reasonable person to only one conclusion. Hendricks & Assocs., Inc. v. Daewoo Corp., 923 F.2d 209, 214 (1st Cir.1991); Gallagher v. Wilton Enterprises, Inc., 962 F.2d 120, 124 (1st Cir. 1992).

The facts...