Palmetto State Medical Center, Inc. v. Operation Lifeline
| Decision Date | 02 July 1997 |
| Docket Number | No. 94-2447,94-2447 |
| Citation | 117 F.3d 142 |
| Parties | RICO Bus.Disp.Guide 9299 PALMETTO STATE MEDICAL CENTER, INCORPORATED, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. OPERATION LIFELINE; Dan W. Brooks; Michael Cloer; Tebra Cloer; Benjamin Dawkins; James Freeman; William Gautsch; Glenda Hawkins; Robin Henderson; Virginia Homol; Leonard Kull; Ruthie Kull; Walter League; James Marlow; Beth May; Linville Miller; Gerald Medford; Enny McDowell; William Putnam; Grover Owings; Lu Rash; Sara Rollins; Raymond Sandford; Anne Schell; Stephen Timmerman; Joy Vaughn; Elizabeth Walsh; Susie Wedgewood; Linda Hillyard; Steven Lefemine; Carolyn Fridal; Carrie Harrol; Albert Padgett; Kay Melvin Daniel; Catherine German; Gary Hawkins; Brian Merritt; David Schell, Defendants-Appellants, and Operation Rescue; Sherry Waters; Carol Wilkins; David Matthews; Danny Barton; Donald Boroughs; Fred Bracken; Linda Bracken; Vickie Carter; Deborah Davis; Bennie Durham; Jonathan Hardin; Jeanette Horne; Larry Lee; Darrell Lewis; Ellen Lewis; Richard Merritt; Susan Merritt; Robert Newman; Joan Owings; Howard Ritzenhaler; James Rodermond; Katherine Vargo; Mike Vargo; Kenneth Waters; Mike White, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
ARGUED: David Wesley Holmes, Holmes Law Firm, Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellants. Randall Scott Hiller, Randall S. Hiller, P.A., Greenville, South Carolina, for Appellee.
Before RUSSELL, WIDENER, and HALL, Circuit Judges.
Reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by published opinion. Judge WIDENER wrote the opinion, in which Judge DONALD K. RUSSELL and Judge K.K. HALL concur.
Defendants appeal from judgments against them on state-law trespass and civil RICO claims, assigning numerous errors committed by the district court. For the reasons stated below, we reverse in part and vacate and remand in part.
Plaintiff Palmetto State Medical Center is a South Carolina corporation which provides gynecological services, including abortions, to its patients. Defendants originally were 66 individuals who oppose abortion and two anti-abortion entities, Operation Lifeline and Operation Rescue. On April 28, July 5, and July 8, 1989, anti-abortion protestors demonstrated at the Palmetto clinic. Palmetto alleges that on each of these dates some or all of the defendants, participating with Operation Rescue, trespassed on Palmetto property, blocking the entrance and preventing its patients from entering.
As a result of the protests, Palmetto filed an eight-count complaint against defendants in the district court. The only claims at issue on appeal are state-law trespass claims against 41 individuals, Operation Lifeline, and Operation Rescue, and civil RICO claims against four of the individual defendants and Operation Rescue. 1
At trial, Palmetto called six defendants to the stand to testify. 2 Palmetto also called Lorraine McGuire, an employee at the clinic, and introduced numerous exhibits. At the close of Palmetto's case, defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law on the trespass and RICO claims. Before ruling on the motion, the district court suggested that Palmetto needed to introduce additional evidence of defendants' arrests and convictions for criminal trespass. Defendants objected to the introduction of this evidence on the court's own motion after the close of Palmetto's case, but the objection was overruled.
The trespass claims against 25 of the defendants did not go to the jury. 3 The remaining defendants rested without putting on evidence, and the case was submitted to the jury. The jury found the remaining defendants liable for trespass and awarded totals of $2,150 actual and $43,500 punitive damages. The jury also found Operation Rescue, Dan Brooks, William Gautsch, Anne Schell, and Steven Lefemine liable for RICO violations, 4 with total actual damages of $25,000. The district court trebled this amount for total RICO damages of $75,000.
Defendants appeal, alleging several errors committed by the district court. Briefly, defendants argue that the district court erred in denying defendants' motion to compel discovery of the identities of certain Palmetto patients, in admitting statistical evidence relating to Palmetto's loss of clientele on the dates in question, in denying defendants' motion for judgment as a matter of law on the trespass and RICO claims, in reopening Palmetto's case and admitting defendants' answers to Palmetto's requests for admissions, in charging the jury on the effects of those admissions, in charging the jury on the effects of a South Carolina real-property statute on the scope of Palmetto's lease, and in refusing to allow defendants to testify as to their religious convictions. Finally, defendants challenge the constitutionality of RICO as applied to the facts of this case. We address these challenges below.
In South Carolina, "[a]lthough the entry by a person on the property of another may initially be lawful, the person becomes a trespasser when the person fails to depart after being asked by the owner to leave." Wright v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 315 S.C. 521, 445 S.E.2d 657, 659 (1994). For purposes of our analysis of the propriety of the judgment against defendants on Palmetto's trespass claims, we will divide the defendants into three groups: the 35 non-testifying individual defendants, the six testifying individual defendants, and the two organizations.
At the close of Palmetto's case, defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law on both the trespass and RICO causes of action. The court then discussed the lack of evidence supporting Palmetto's trespass claims, particularly relating to the defendants who had not taken the stand to testify. The district court granted a recess to allow the plaintiff to produce evidence to avoid a directed verdict. Palmetto returned with defendants' answers to requests for admission, specifically answers 12 and 13. Answers 12 and 13 are as follows, as to each of the individual defendants:
12. That this Defendant has been charged with the crime of criminal trespass, in accordance with Section 16-11-610, in the City or County of Greenville, South Carolina.
Answer: Admitted.
13. That this Defendant has been convicted of the crime of criminal trespass, pursuant to Section 16-11-610, in the City or County of Greenville, South Carolina.
Answer: Admitted.
Defendants objected to the admission of these admissions as evidence and argue on appeal that the district court erred in allowing Palmetto to introduce the answers. We agree. Taken together, answers 12 and 13 establish only that defendants have been convicted of criminal trespass in or around Greenville, South Carolina. Nothing in the record, for any defendant, ties the conviction admitted in answer 13 to the alleged trespasses at the Palmetto clinic on the dates in question.
Based on the evidence in the record, the jury could not find that the answers to the requests for admission are probative of plaintiff's claim that defendants trespassed on the plaintiff's property on the dates in question. As to the defendants who did not testify, there simply is no other evidence of trespass in the record, as the district court recognized at trial. As to these defendants, then, the answers to the requests for admissions were irrelevant under Fed.R.Evid. 401 and should not have been admitted. Although there is evidence in the record from which a jury could infer that the testifying defendants did trespass on the plaintiff's property on the dates in question, see infra Part I.C, none of the evidence ties the conviction admitted in answer 13 to the Palmetto clinic or to any of the dates alleged in Palmetto's complaint. 5 Thus, as to these defendants, as well, the answers to the requests for admission were irrelevant. We therefore hold that the district court erred in admitting, at the close of plaintiff's evidence, answers 12 and 13 to plaintiff's requests for admissions.
Having determined that the admission of defendants' answers to plaintiff's requests for admissions was error, we must now determine the effect of this error. Defendants argue that the district court's jury charge was in error as it relates to the answers to plaintiff's requests for admissions. The court instructed the jury as follows:
Under the law, through their attorney, they admitted criminal trespass in this particular case. The effect of those admissions in a court of law requires no further proof, requires no further evidence. As a matter of law, that particular fact is admitted.
(emphasis added). It is at once apparent that this instruction, even if it did not, very nearly directed a verdict for the plaintiff on the trespass count. We agree that this instruction was erroneous. As noted above, the admissions established no more than that these defendants have been convicted of criminal trespass in or around Greenville on an unspecified date. The admissions do not establish, as the district court instructed, that the defendants trespassed "in this particular case," i.e., at the Palmetto clinic on April 28, July 5, or July 8, 1989.
Because we are of opinion that the district court erred in admitting the answers to Palmetto's requests for admission and in instructing the jury that no further evidence on the issue was needed, and because we have no doubt that this error was not harmless, we must at a minimum vacate the jury's verdict finding each defendant liable to Palmetto for trespass. We next address whether, as to each group of defendants, the judgment should be reversed or the case remanded for new trial.
Because no evidence was presented that the non-testifying defendants were present on Palmetto's property on the dates in question or were in any way involved with Operation Lifeline or the incidents of April 28, July 5, or July 8,...
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