Clay v. Equifax, Inc.

• Decision Date: 11 June 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-7263,84-7263
• Citation: 762 F.2d 952
• Parties: Henry Gerrard CLAY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. EQUIFAX, INC., et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 952

762 F.2d 952

Henry Gerrard CLAY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. EQUIFAX, INC., et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 84-7263.

United States Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit.

June 11, 1985.

Fred W. Killion, Jr., Patricia K. Olney, Mobile, Ala., for plaintiff-appellant.

Louis E. Braswell, Caine O'Rear, III, Mobile, Ala., for Equifax.

Champ Lyons, Jr., Mobile, Ala., for Paul Revere Life Ins. Co.

Harold L. Ferguson, Jr., Terry McElheny, Birmingham, Ala., for Nat. Union.

Bert S. Nettles, Forrest S. Latta, Mobile, Ala., for Nationwide.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.

Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, ANDERSON, Circuit Judge, and THORNBERRY ^*, Senior Circuit Judge.

THORNBERRY, Senior Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellant Henry Clay brought suit against three insurance companies and a credit reporting agency alleging defamation and violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681 et seq. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of all the defendants but did not state its reasons for doing so. Because we find that all of Clay's claims are either groundless or barred by the applicable statutes of limitation, we affirm.

FACTS

During 1977 Clay, an attorney, applied for and received disability insurance from each of the defendant appellee insurance companies, Paul Revere Life Insurance Company (Paul Revere), National Union Fire Insurance Company (National Union), and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (Nationwide). Later in that year Clay discovered that he had cataracts and filed claims for benefits with the insurance companies. Subsequently, the insurance companies requested that defendant-appellee Equifax, ¹ a credit reporting agency, investigate Clay and his claims for disability benefits. In March 1978 Equifax submitted investigative reports to National Union and Nationwide. In July 1978 Equifax submitted an additional report to National Union. Finally, in February 1979 Equifax submitted a report to Paul Revere. The reports stated inter alia that Clay was a suspected drug dealer and homosexual. They stated also that Clay was a "lazy attorney" who had wrongfully withheld his clients' money.

Clay testified in deposition ² and by a subsequent affidavit that sometime during 1978 he telephoned Equifax and asked the receptionist if Equifax was investigating him. Although Clay's deposition and affidavit are somewhat contradictory on this point, ³ it appears that the receptionist told Clay that she did not know whether Equifax was investigating him, but would have someone at Equifax return his call. Equifax never returned the call. In 1979, however, Clay testified by deposition in a state court action that he knew that Nationwide had hired Equifax to investigate him.

On May 15, 1981, pursuant to Nationwide's request Equifax mailed to Nationwide copies of reports that it had submitted previously to Nationwide and the other insurance companies.

On February 24, 1983, Clay brought this action in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, Alabama, alleging defamation and violations of the FCRA. On motion of the defendants the case was removed to federal district court. On March 13, 1984, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of all the defendants, but gave no statement of reasons nor did it state the material undisputed issues of fact on which the decision was based or the conclusions of law that were applied. On appeal Clay contends (1) that genuine issues of material fact remain, and therefore summary judgment was inappropriate, and (2) that we should require the district court to state specifically its reasons for granting summary judgment. Because upon examining the record and considering the appellate briefs we find that all of Clay's claims are either groundless or barred by the applicable statutes of limitation, we affirm the district court's order awarding summary judgment.

I. Opaque and Unilluminating Summary Judgment Order

In granting the defendants' motion for summary judgment the district court stated no reasons, did not identify material disputed facts, and gave no hint of its conclusions of law. The court's order merely recites that no genuine issue of material fact remains, and we can find in the record no other statement, however informal, of the court's rationale. Clay contends that we should remand the case for the district court to issue findings of fact and conclusions of law in support of its judgment.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a district court acting on a motion for summary judgment to identify the materials it has considered in rendering its decision, its reasons for decision, the material and undisputed matters of fact on which the decision turns (if applicable), or the principles of law relied upon (if applicable). Consequently, in the hands of an appellate court the order appealed from may be an enigma.

Frequently the material that a district court has considered is not identified unless the court's order identifies it. The district court may consider pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions on file, affidavits, oral testimony, matters subject to judicial notice, stipulations and concessions, and other materials admissible in evidence or otherwise usable at trial. 6 Moore Federal Practice Sec. 56.15. The court may draw legal presumptions as well. Id. Moreover, some district courts provide by local rule for factual statements by moving counsel, not sworn to, that are accepted if not controverted. ⁴

Review may be clouded by uncertainty concerning depositions. Procedures vary as to whether depositions must be filed with the clerk, and when, and whether they must be formally tendered to the court for its consideration. Similar questions may exist for transcripts of hearings. Consequently the appellate court may not know, and at times counsel are uncertain or in disagreement, as to what the court considered. Not infrequently briefs refer to matter that cannot be found in the record.

Secondly, both counsel and appellate court may be in the dark as to the district court's reason for decision. Reasons may be predicated on fact or law or both. The phrase "findings of fact" is often loosely used in connection with Rule 56. It is, however, a phrase singularly inappropriate because a premise of Rule 56 is that there is no genuine issue as to material facts, and the court is not required to find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law thereon as required in Rule 52(a). What is important in the summary judgment context is that the court, where relevant, identifies the undisputed facts on which its decision is based and identifies its conclusions of law as well. This can be done informally and even dictated to the court reporter.

When reviewing an unrevealing order granting or denying summary judgment, the appellate court is faced with several possibilities. The district court may have concluded that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact. Or it may have found that there is a genuine issue of fact but that the fact in question is not material. Under either of these alternatives, with fact issues out of the way, the court may have decided the case on a substantive legal ground. But, on the other hand, it may have concluded that there are material issues of fact and thus it may never have reached the substantive legal question at all. In some cases there will be more than one legal issue, with one a prerequisite for consideration of the other; for instance, there may be a choice of law issue and the court may have been required to choose the governing law and then apply the governing law. The reviewing court may be at a loss to know whether the district court based its decision on choice of law or on application of the law chosen.

There are numerous possible permutations. The appellate court, searching the summary judgment record and at times unsure of what that record is, must identify every possible ground that will support affirmance of the decision below and consider it, and if it rejects one ground then it must move to the next. Aerolineas Dominicanas S.A. v. Brown Aviation Services, Inc., 598 F.2d 416 (5th Cir.1979) demonstrates the confusion that can arise.

At the pretrial conference, Aerolineas's counsel conceded that the damages requested in Counts II and III were excessive. Apparently for this reason alone, the district court granted summary judgment for the defendants on those two counts. This was error. Although Aerolineas's counsel was lamentably confused about the amount of damages his client had sustained, he maintained throughout that Aerolineas had indeed been wronged and damaged. Under these circumstances the district court should at least have allowed Aerolineas to amend its complaint.

On the record before us there are no other justifications for summary judgment. To judge from the depositions and documents in the record, there is a genuine factual dispute about the truth of Aerolineas's assertions. The appellees argue that Aerolineas's claim is barred by the judgment rendered in another litigation, in Florida state court; but the district court seemed not to rest its grant of summary judgment on this ground, and the record does not disclose enough about the nature of the Florida proceeding to permit us to decide the question. On remand, the district court will have the full record before it and will be able to obtain other documentary evidence. It may or may not find sufficient reasons for granting summary judgment again.

Id. at 417 (footnotes omitted).

In the final analysis appellate review of what the district court did is largely an error-correcting function. Ordinarily the appellate court is given the tools to determine if the trial court acted correctly. The unexplained summary judgment order not only denies to the appellate court the tools of review but conceals what the court did and why and leaves the...