Alexander v. Alexander, 7086.

Decision Date04 January 1956
Docket NumberNo. 7086.,7086.
PartiesAlonzo B. ALEXANDER, Appellant, v. Verna Cook ALEXANDER, Appellee.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

James H. Price, Greenville, S. C., Horace L. Bomar, Spartanburg, S. C. (Neville Holcombe, James D. Poag, Greenville, S. C., Holcombe & Bomar, Spartanburg, S. C., Price & Poag, Greenville, S. C., on the brief), for appellant.

D. H. Redfearn, Miami, Fla., J. Davis Kerr, Spartanburg, S. C. (Sam R. Watt, Kerr & Evins, Spartanburg, S. C., and Redfearn & Ferrell, Miami, Fla., on the brief), for appellee.

Before PARKER, Chief Judge, and SOPER and DOBIE, Circuit Judges.

SOPER, Circuit Judge.

This is a suit for malicious prosecution by Verna Cook Alexander against her husband, Alonzo B. Alexander, based on the charge that on January 20, 1954 he maliciously and without probable cause filed a petition against her in the County Judge's Court of Broward County, Florida, and had her committed as a mental incompetent to the psychiatric ward for mental patients in Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. The charge was denied and the case was heard before a jury in the District Court which found for the plaintiff in the sum of $175,000 actual damages and $75,000 punitive damages. The District Judge, after considering a motion for a new trial, ordered that a new trial be had unless the plaintiff remit the sum of $87,500. The plaintiff accepted the remittitur and judgment was entered for $87,500 actual and $75,000 punitive damages. The principal grounds of this appeal are that the judge erred in refusing to direct a verdict for the defendant for failure of proof as to malice and want of probable cause, and in his rulings on evidence and in his charge to the jury.

The evidence concerning the relations between the parties and the events which led to this suit ranged over a considerable area and a long period of time. For our present purposes it may be summarized as follows:

The parties were married on October 1, 1934 at Little Rock, Arkansas. Prior to marriage the plaintiff had lived at Malvern, Arkansas with her parents. Her father, A. B. Cook, who died earlier in that year, had the principal interest in the Malvern Brick and Tile business and also in the A. B. Cook Company, a lumber business. Upon his death both holdings passed to his wife and to the plaintiff and her sister.

The defendant was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a resident of Spartanburg, South Carolina, who had inherited from his father certain real estate including the family residence and also a music store in Spartanburg. At the time of his marriage he was 37 and she was 24 years of age. They had one child who was afflicted with an incurable disease and was 16 years of age at the time of the trial below and has since died.

The estate of A. B. Cook was heavily in debt and after his death the two businesses in which he was interested did not prosper. In 1943 Alexander took charge of them at the request of his wife and mother-in-law and managed them with such success that when the present suit began they had a net worth in excess of one million dollars. He testified that he lent large sums of money to the business and gave his services as managing head without salary for a certain period of time. In 1946 he purchased stock in these enterprises for $150,000. The purchase included the one-third interest of his mother-in-law, the one-third interest of his wife's sister, and, according to his testimony, the purchase also included his wife's one-third interest so that he acquired the entire stock of the business. Thereupon he transferred one-half of the stock to his wife. At the time of the trial below the two businesses had been merged into a single company known as Malvern Brick and Tile Company, of which he was the president at a salary of $36,000 a year while his wife was vice-president and secretary at a salary of $12,000 a year. The business owned an elaborate and valuable demonstration house which was built in 1950 at Hillsboro Beach, Florida. There is some evidence that for some time prior to 1952 the relations between husband and wife had not been harmonious. For the most part they lived in Spartanburg but they also spent considerable periods of time at the Cook residence on company property in Arkansas and also at the Hillsboro house in Florida. They placed their son in school at Palm Beach on October 1, 1952.

Various controversial matters between husband and wife came to a head in this year and steadily increased. For our purposes it is sufficient to state the general nature of the disputes without going into detail. Perhaps the most important relates to the ownership of the stock in the Malvern Brick and Tile Company in which he claimed that he and his wife each owned 50 per cent of the stock whereas she claimed that she owned 71 per cent and he 29 per cent thereof. This dispute became of especial significance when she separated from him and entered suit for a divorce in October, 1952 in Arkansas on the ground that he had treated her with contempt and indignity, and had made her life intolerable. While this suit was pending he secured a restraining order from a Florida court prohibiting her from removing the contents of certain safe deposit boxes. In November '52 she also brought suit against him in Arkansas in which she set up her claim to the ownership of 71 per cent of the stock and sued in order that the books of the company be changed to show her title. This case came to trial and resulted in a judgment in her favor on October 17, 1953. The decision was appealed to the Supreme Court of the State and was pending during the trial of the case below. Malvern Brick & Tile Co. v. Alexander, Ark., 272 S.W.2d 77. Subsequently the judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the state. While this litigation was going on the husband stopped the payment of his wife's salary as an officer of the company.

In addition to these sources of conflict the wife accused her husband of removing $20,000 worth of furniture from the Florida house. There was also litigation between them over the contents of the South Carolina residence. The husband had put this house in the name of the wife with the understanding that she was to spend some money in the improvement of the property, taking back from her a deed to be recorded in case anything should happen to her. When the difficulties arose the husband recorded the deed without compensation for such monies as she claimed she had spent upon the property. There was also dispute as to the ownership of the music store in Spartanburg which the husband had inherited from his father in which she claimed a half interest.

The divorce suit brought by the wife in Arkansas was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and on October 20, 1953 the husband brought suit for divorce against his wife in the courts of South Carolina on the ground of desertion.

During the year 1953 the wife wrote the husband a series of letters in which she expressed the utmost loathing and contempt for him in the most violent and venomous terms and stated that he had been guilty of conduct worthy of imprisonment for crime. She accused him in one letter of improper relations with a woman although at the trial below she offered no evidence to support the claim; and on the eve of Christmas, 1953 she sent him a Christmas greeting couched in scornful and bitter terms. It was under these circumstances that the events occurred which gave rise to the pending suit.

In December, 1953 the wife went to Florida and stayed at the Hillsboro House during the Christmas season. The boy spent Christmas with his father and then went to Hillsboro to spend New Year's day with his mother. After the holidays the boy returned to his school at Palm Beach and his mother was about to return to Arkansas when she learned that he had become very ill and she had him taken to the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Dr. Ann Louise Hendricks, their family physician, accompanied her on this trip. In the middle of January, 1954 the father came to Florida to visit his son at the hospital. He testified at the trial that one day while behind a screen he overheard his wife tell the boy that she would like to see her husband lying dead in the gutter covered with slime and that she was going to have him put in jail. She denied making this statement.

The following day the husband consulted Dr. Hendricks about his wife's condition telling her of the statement which he had overheard and showing her the Christmas card which he had received from her. Dr. Hendricks had attended all three members of the family on prior occasions. She was a general practitioner but she had had experience in mental hospitals and practiced psychiatry and attended patients with minor mental disorders to some extent. She had previously treated Mrs. Alexander in July, 1951 and had sent her to a hospital for extreme nervousness. In December 1952 she again found Mrs. Alexander extremely nervous and agitated and made an engagement for her to consult a psychiatrist but Mrs. Alexander failed to keep the appointment.

Dr. Hendricks was of the opinion in January, 1954, when consulted by Mr. Alexander, that his wife was verging on a paranoid condition and she arranged for him to see Drs. Anderson and Jarrett who specialized in psychiatry. They advised him to take compulsory legal proceedings to have her examined, since she had not kept the prior engagement.

Alexander also consulted George Leaird, a Florida lawyer, who had previously represented him in getting the restraining order as to the safe deposit boxes. He showed the attorney the offensive letters his wife had written and told him that he and his wife had had domestic troubles and litigation, but he did not tell the lawyer about his suit for divorce against his wife or that he had cut off his wife's salary or about the disputes between...

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