MULTIMEDIA PUB. v. Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, Civ. A. No. 6:90-2591-3.

• Decision Date: 07 May 1991
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 6:90-2591-3.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina
• Parties: MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING COMPANY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, INC., and The New York Times Company, Plaintiffs, v. GREENVILLE-SPARTANBURG AIRPORT DISTRICT, and Gary Jackson, in his official capacity as Executive Director of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport Commission, Defendants.

774 F. Supp. 977

MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING COMPANY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, INC., and The New York Times Company, Plaintiffs, v. GREENVILLE-SPARTANBURG AIRPORT DISTRICT, and Gary Jackson, in his official capacity as Executive Director of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport Commission, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 6:90-2591-3.

United States District Court, D. South Carolina, Greenville Division.

May 7, 1991.

Wallace K. Lightsey, Wyche, Burgess, Freeman & Parham, P.A., Greenville, S.C., for plaintiffs.

Stanley T. Case, Edward G. Smith, Butler, Means, Evins & Browne, Spartanburg, S.C., for defendants.

ORDER AND INJUNCTION

GEORGE ROSS ANDERSON, Jr., District Judge.

In this action the plaintiffs allege that the defendants' refusal to allow plaintiffs to place newsracks in the terminal of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport violates the plaintiffs' rights of free speech and press under the United States and South Carolina Constitutions. The plaintiffs seek an injunction ordering the defendants to allow newsracks in the terminal.

The Court held a nonjury trial of this action on April 29, 1991. After consideration of the testimony and exhibits, and for the reasons hereinafter set forth in the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, the Court finds for the plaintiffs. The Court therefore grants the injunction sought by plaintiffs, on the terms set forth hereinbelow.

FINDINGS OF FACT

1. Plaintiff Multimedia Publishing Company of South Carolina, Inc., is a South Carolina corporation with its principal place of business in Greenville, South Carolina, and its principal business activity the publication and sale of The Greenville News and The Greenville Piedmont, both of which are daily newspapers of general circulation in the piedmont area of South Carolina.

2. Plaintiff The New York Times Company is a New York corporation with its principal place of business in New York and one of its business activities the publication and sale of The Spartanburg Herald-Journal, a daily newspaper of general circulation in the piedmont area of South Carolina.

3. Defendant Greenville-Spartanburg Airport District is a body politic and corporate created by a South Carolina statute, S.C.Code Ann. § 55-11-110 (Law. Co-op. 1976), to carry out, through the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport Commission, the operation of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport (hereinafter the "Airport").

4. Defendant Gary Jackson is the Executive Director of the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport Commission.

5. The Airport is a public airport. Public access to the Airport is primarily through an access road from nearby Interstate Highway 85. Access to the terminal is unrestricted, although in recent months, because of the Persian Gulf hostilities, the Airport has restricted access to the concourses to passengers with tickets or persons with security clearance.

6. The Airport recently underwent a major renovation, which more than doubled its size. The renovation was designed to accommodate anticipated traffic at the Airport through the end of this century.

7. As one approaches the entrance to the Airport, to the right are several uncovered parking lots available for use by the public. To the left and front of the terminal is a multi-level parking garage, which is also available to the public.

8. The basic configuration of the Airport terminal is as follows: Ticket and baggage claim areas are in a lower lobby at the street level in the front of the terminal. The lower lobby is spacious and uncrowded. It includes, in addition to the ticket and baggage claim areas, a large fountain, a bank, a travel agent office, rental car agency bureaus, public telephones, seating areas, planters and trash containers. Two banks of escalators ascend from these areas to a middle level containing, among other things, public restrooms, a gift shop, a bar, a restaurant, public telephone booths, vending machines, planters, trash containers, and an outdoor terrace from which people may watch the airplanes. From this middle level two separate passages lead in opposite directions to two separate security checkpoints. After passing through the appropriate security checkpoint, passengers ascend via an escalator to one of the two concourses of the terminal. The concourses are spacious; they contain the individual gates used to board airplanes, the respective airline desk for each gate, seating areas, public restrooms, desks with individual telephones and work areas for awaiting or arriving passengers, planters, trash containers, and large open areas.

9. The Airport gift shop sells the plaintiffs' newspapers, among others. The hours of the gift shop presently are 6:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. At present, approximately a dozen flights are scheduled to depart before 6:30 a.m. and to arrive at or after 9:00 p.m.¹

10. There are no newsracks (or any other form of newspaper-dispensing devices) in the Airport terminal. Other than through the gift shop, newspapers are not available anywhere in the Airport terminal. Since the summer of 1990, the Airport Commission has allowed newsracks in the parking garage, and the plaintiffs have set up racks for their papers there. In addition to The Greenville News, The Greenville Piedmont, and The Spartanburg Herald-Journal, three other newspapers have set up racks in the parking garage.

11. The public passageways in the terminal are such that, if a passenger is arriving or departing through Concourse A, he can enter or leave through the baggage claim area without walking past the gift shop.

12. In the fall of 1988, Steve Brandt, who is the General Manager of The Greenville News-Piedmont Company, approached Dick Graham, then Executive Director of the Airport Commission, about placing newsracks in the Airport terminal. The concerns which prompted Mr. Brandt to make this approach were that newspaper availability in the terminal was limited to the gift shop during its hours of operation. The newspaper had received complaints from various businesspeople in Greenville about not being able to get a paper when leaving early or arriving late at the Airport.

13. Mr. Brandt, Mr. Graham, and a member of the newspaper's Marketing Committing, Deborah Davis, met on November 2, 1988, which was before the renovation of the Airport had taken place. During this meeting, Mr. Graham said that the Airport terminal at that time was very congested and that newsracks would only exacerbate the congestion. Mr. Graham also stated that, in his opinion, the gift shop adequately handled existing demand for newspapers at the Airport. Mr. Brandt asked about the possibility of placing newspaper vending machines in the terminal after the renovation had been completed. Mr. Graham said that he had no objection to this idea in principle. Ms. Davis asked about placing newsracks in the parking garage, and Mr. Graham indicated that he had no problem with that idea. Mr. Graham said that he would bring up the newspapers' request for discussion at the next meeting of the Airport Commission.

14. On December 7, 1988, Mr. Brandt called Mr. Graham to see what the Commission had decided. Mr. Graham said that he had discussed the request with the Commission, and that he did not want to put newsracks in the terminal at that time. He said, however, that he had contacted the architects in charge of the renovation about designing an area for newsracks which would not mar the aesthetics of the terminal. Mr. Graham said that the new concourses would be open in late 1989 and that the newspapers could expect to be in them at that time. Mr. Graham asked Mr. Brandt just to be patient. In response to a question from Mr. Brandt, Mr. Graham said that newsracks could be put in the parking garage as soon as it was finished, which would be in early 1989.

15. After the November 2 meeting, Mr. Graham called Michael Keselica, the chief architect, to discuss how newspaper vending machines might be placed in the terminal in a manner consistent with the overall Airport design. Mr. Keselica had a number of questions concerning the type, number, and location of the proposed newsracks. Mr. Graham never responded. In Mr. Keselica's words, "at that point the matter was dropped. We didn't speak any further about it." Mr. Graham had one later conversation with Mr. Keselica, in which they discussed placement of newsracks outside of the terminal, but Mr. Graham still had no answers to Mr. Keselica's questions. According to Mr. Keselica, "the matter was not discussed further and it just didn't come up again." When Mr. Keselica later attempted to follow up on the issue, he found out that Mr. Graham had retired and that Gary Jackson had replaced him. Mr. Jackson informed Mr. Keselica that the Airport was going to allow newsracks only in the parking garage. That was the end of Mr. Keselica's involvement in the matter.

16. After hearing nothing for nearly a year, Mr. Brandt set up a meeting with Mr. Jackson on November 29, 1989, to discuss again the newspaper's desire to place vending machines in the terminal. Mr. Jackson said that they were still considering allowing newsracks in the parking garage, but that they had not been able to find a suitable location in the terminal. Mr. Brandt pressed his case, but Mr. Jackson categorically refused to allow newsracks anywhere in the terminal under any circumstances.

17. Mr. Brandt wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Airport Commission on January 25, 1990, renewing his request to allow newsracks in the terminal. Mr. Brandt received no response to his letter.

18. In the course of his communications with Mr. Graham, Mr. Jackson, and the Commission Chairman, Mr. Brandt offered to customize the newsracks so that they would not detract from the aesthetics of the terminal. Mr. Brandt received no response to these offers, other than the repeated refusals to allow any newsracks, in any shape or form, in the terminal.

19. In the spring of 1990, The Spartanburg Herald-Journal joined in The Greenville News-Piedmont...