Columbia Pictures Corporation v. Grengs
| Decision Date | 23 June 1958 |
| Docket Number | No. 12210-12215.,12210-12215. |
| Citation | 257 F.2d 45 |
| Parties | COLUMBIA PICTURES CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sheldon M. GRENGS et al., Defendants-Appellees. TWENTIETH CENTURY-FOX FILM CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sheldon M. GRENGS et al., Defendants-Appellees. WARNER BROS. PICTURES DISTRIBUTING CORP., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sheldon M. GRENGS et al., Defendants-Appellees. RKO TELERADIO PICTURES, Inc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sheldon M. GRENGS et al., Defendants-Appellees. UNIVERSAL FILM EXCHANGES, Inc., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sheldon M. GRENGS et al., Defendants-Appellees. LOEW'S INCORPORATED, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Sheldon M. GRENGS et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Philip Neville, and Neville, Johnson & Thompson, Minneapolis, Minn., R. A. Crawford, and Crawford, Crawford & Cirilli, Superior, Wis., John F. Whicher, New York City, and Sargoy & Stein, New York City, for plaintiffs-appellants.
Louis B. Schwartz, Samuel P. Halpern, Minneapolis, Minn., for appellees.
Before FINNEGAN, SCHNACKENBERG, and PARKINSON, Circuit Judges.
Each of the six motion picture distributors, involved in this appeal, commenced these diversity of citizenship cases against defendant motion picture exhibitors to recover actual and punitive damages claimed to have been occasioned by a conspiracy to defraud each plaintiff, respectively, in which the defendants named in each case were charged with having participated. The bare bones of plaintiff's allegations can be reported beginning with the statement that during the period March 1, 1947 to April 16, 1954, plaintiff had licensed the exhibition of numerous motion pictures at defendants' theaters, under its copyrights. A number of such motion pictures were licensed for fees and the amount of which was measured, in whole or in part, by a specified percentage of the box-office receipts from sales of admissions to each respective motion picture exhibition thus licensed. Defendants, pursuant to a fraudulent scheme initiated at the Hollywood Theater and expanded to the other controlled theaters as they were opened, falsely and fraudulently underreported to plaintiffs the box-office receipts of its percentage pictures exhibited at defendants' theaters. Plaintiffs claim that it relied on such false reports to its damage by billing defendants for, and accepting from them payments of, lower exhibition license fees, or "film rentals," on the percentage pictures thus falsely underreported by defendants. The underreporting is claimed to have been carried out deliberately, with wanton disregard of plaintiffs' rights, and with intent to deceive, justifying assessment of punitive damages.
While actual and punitive damages in excess of the jurisdictional minimum amount were twice alleged, in the original complaint, to be recoverable, plaintiffs pleaded inability to compute the exact amount of its actual damages, declaring that:
Allegations were made in the initial complaints to the effect "that the damages to which plaintiff is entitled * * * are in excess of $3000.00 exclusive of interest and costs." After some preliminary skirmishing by counsel, and a flurry of affidavits concerning an audit undertaken by and for plaintiffs and partially completed of defendants' records, the district judge denied a defense motion to dismiss the complaints based on challenges to the jurisdictional amounts. Subsequently, and after several affidavits pertaining to the jurisdictional amount were filed, the district court sustained defendant's motions and the complaints were dismissed, without opinion, on the ground that the amount in controversy is less than the required amount, and plaintiff distributors appealed. The matters in dispute are separate and distinct as to each plaintiff and they do not rely on aggregating their claims to reach the statutory figure. All six actions are substantially the same; this jurisdictional question is common to all, and the causes were consolidated for trial below and we authorized the filing of consolidated briefs and appendices.
We think this record shows the essential requisites of jurisdiction of the district court because "the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $3000 exclusive of interest and costs, and is between: (1) Citizens of different States * * *" 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). There is ample support, by way of affidavits among other things, for plaintiffs' allegations as to the jurisdictional amount. "In a diversity litigation the value of the `matter in controversy' is measured not by the monetary result of determining the principle involved, but by its...
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...for less than the jurisdictional amount." St. Paul Mercury Indemnity Co. v. Red Cab Co., supra; see also, Columbia Pictures Corporation v. Grengs, 7 Cir., 1958, 257 F.2d 45, 47; Olan Mills, Inc., of Tennessee v. Enterprise Pub. Co., 5 Cir., 1954, 210 F.2d 895, 896. We think plaintiff has me......
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...when a party has alleged excessive damages in bad faith. Nevertheless, as this court observed in Columbia Pictures Corp. et al. v. Grengs et al., 257 F.2d 45, 47 (7th Cir. 1958), "The plaintiff need not twice establish his proof of value — once before trial on the merits and later on the me......
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