RCI Northeast Services Div. v. Boston Edison Co.

• Decision Date: 30 June 1987
• Docket Number: No. 87-1057,87-1057
• Citation: 822 F.2d 199
• Parties: RCI NORTHEAST SERVICES DIVISION, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. BOSTON EDISON COMPANY, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 199

822 F.2d 199

RCI NORTHEAST SERVICES DIVISION, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. BOSTON EDISON COMPANY, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 87-1057.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Argued June 1, 1987.

Decided June 30, 1987.

William G. Meserve, Boston, Mass., with whom Ropes & Gray and John A. Walsh, Jr. were on brief, for defendant, appellant.

John D. O'Reilly, III, Farmingham, Mass., with whom O'Reilly & Grosso was on brief, for plaintiff, appellee.

Before BREYER and SELYA, Circuit Judges, and RE, ^* Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

In an appeal which sheds considerably more heat than light, the defendant-appellant, the Boston Edison Company (Edison), attempts to persuade us that a money judgment which eventuated against it following a nonjury trial in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts was improvidently rendered. We are not persuaded.

1. BACKGROUND

Edison is a utility company which, in 1981, needed to accomplish certain block wall modifications at one of its generating facilities, Pilgrim Nuclear (Pilgrim), in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Edison prepared specifications for the work and requested bids on a time-and-materials basis. Several prospective vendors responded. One such bidder was the plaintiff-appellee, RCI Northeast Services Division (RCI). In a transmittal letter, RCI described its quotation as a "cost plus percentage fee" proposal. It submitted a series of enclosures which set forth fee schedules, a rundown of shop facilities, labor costs, and equipment charges. On the page dealing with hourly and overtime rates for the crafts, the following language appeared:

Labor cost rates include all costs, burdens, insurances and taxes applicable, based on current labor rates and are subject to escalation.

Eventually, Edison decided to let the contract to RCI. Though the reasons why the defendant selected plaintiff's bid are somewhat blurred--the different formats used by those who responded to the solicitation make cross-comparison a chancy exercise--it is clear that the (relatively modest) markup was a factor. When matters came down to the wire, Edison chose to forgo preparation of an integrated contract document. Instead, it issued a series of purchase orders which declared that the work was to be performed "on a cost plus fee basis." Billings were to be "in accordance with the [RCI] proposal on file with Edison." That proposal, of course, included the above-quoted escalation clause.

RCI performed the work in 1981-82, and submitted periodic billings--billings which the appellee, at least, viewed as estimates. These were paid. In December 1983, almost eighteen months after the work was completed, the other shoe dropped: RCI billed Edison to the tune of $185,535, claiming that it had underrecovered its applicable workers' compensation insurance costs. The power company, shocked, refused payment. This suit followed.

II. ISSUE PRESENTED

There is, in the last analysis, but a solitary substantive issue in this case. Nevertheless, in order to achieve a balanced perspective, it is necessary first to examine the derivation of the increased insurance costs.

The workers' compensation coverage carried by RCI referable to the Pilgrim job was written retrospectively as to rate. Under this sort of arrangement, an estimated premium was deposited when the coverage took effect, and actual premium costs were determined after the fact, based on a formula embodying the employer's accident experience for the project. The payment was thereafter adjusted to reflect the recalculation. When so determined, the insurer would apply and bill increments to the premiums retrospectively for the years in question (or, if the experience was more favorable than anticipated, refund any overcharges). Typically, the actual "experience" is not ascertainable for months or even years after the work has ended (when all of the job-related injuries can be fully assessed and the extent of the anticipated payments intelligently computed). Often, an appreciable interval elapses before the true insurance cost becomes known.

There was evidence that this type of policy format was not uncommon in the industry. Indeed, RCI had been engaged under similar cost-plus contracts for other utility companies. The plaintiff's practice, it was said, was to make an appropriate adjustment via a credit or request for additional payment, depending on the experience and the premium fluctuation, after receipt of the final premium cost tabulation. In this case, some eighteen months down the road, RCI was confronted with a retrospective premium increase of $185,535 attributable to the Pilgrim project. Based on the clause quoted above, the appellee submitted its adjustment claim to Edison. ¹ But, the receptacle was not live.

The issue in this case is a straightforward one. From RCI's standpoint, the contract documents specifically protected it against mounting insurance costs, thus shifting the burden of the retrospective workers' compensation premium hike to Edison. The defendant reads the same language quite differently: the base labor rate alone was subject to change, and the associated "burdens," including compensation insurance, would fluctuate only in direct proportion to, and in the same percentage as, the base labor rate itself. In short, Edison maintains that the contract price was not meant to change in accordance with increases in raw insurance costs.

III. PROCEEDINGS BELOW

When the parties came to loggerheads, RCI (a New York corporation) invoked federal diversity jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1332(a), and sued Edison in the district court. As originally pleaded and postured, the suit involved several related claims and counterclaims of RCI and Edison, each against the other, but all of them have been dropped or settled and need not be further remarked. What remains is the premium overrun, as to which Edison denied liability. Eventually, the matter was submitted to the district court as a case stated, on a paper record consisting of the pleadings, various affidavits and depositions, and sundry documentary exhibits.

After briefing and oral argument, the district court issued its memorandum of decision. RCI Northeast Services Division v. Boston Edison Co., 637 F.Supp. 1178 (D.Mass.1986) (RCI I ). The court held that, under the wording of the contract and in light of the discerned intention of the parties, "the disputed language obliges defendant Edison to pay plaintiff $185,535.00 by reason of escalating workmen's compensation insurance costs incurred by plaintiff on this job." Id. at 1180. Final judgment was entered below on December 17, 1986.

IV. STANDARD OF REVIEW

In this case, the parties stipulated that submission on the agreed record would empower the district court to decide the controversy as if "a full evidentiary hearing with live testimony ... produced a record essentially identical to the one [proffered]." Edison asserts, nevertheless, that we have here a pure question of law, subject to plenary review, without recourse to Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a) and the "clearly erroneous" rule contained therein. ² The appellant argues first, that since the decision below rests on an interpretation of a written document, it is not factbound; second, inasmuch as the dispute turned on a silent record (i.e., no live witnesses testified), the district court's findings are entitled to no special deference; and third, that the district court operated under a misapprehension as to the law, thereby undermining any findings of fact. Such static need not occupy us for long.

To be sure, it is for the court to determine if a writing is ambiguous. See Edmonds v. United States, 642 F.2d 877, 881 (1st Cir.1981) (applying Massachusetts law); Freelander v. G. & K. Realty Corp., 357 Mass. 512, 516, 258 N.E.2d 786 (1970). Such a decision responds to a question of law, and is subject to plenary review. Cathbake Investment Co. v. Fisk Electric Co., 700 F.2d 654, 656 (11th Cir.1983). But where the plain meaning of a contract phrase does not spring unambiguously from the page or from the context, its proper direction becomes one for the factfinder, who must ferret out the intent of the parties. Edmonds, 642 F.2d at 881; Singer Co. v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 579 F.2d 433, 439-40 (8th Cir.1978); Gillentine v. McKeand, 426 F.2d 717, 721-22 & n. 13 (1st Cir.1970) (citing Rizzo v. Cunningham, 303 Mass. 16, 20, 20 N.E.2d 471 (1939)).

In this instance, the district court navigated the shoals with commendable circumspection. Although it plainly believed the escalation clause unequivocally to cover RCI's extra insurance costs, RCI I, at 1179, it treated the matter as if the contract were subject to a latent ambiguity on this score. The court proceeded to examine the dealings of the parties, and found that they "never intended that any escalation in plaintiff's costs would have to be absorbed by plaintiff...." Id. This last determination was, on any reasoned view of the fact/law dichotomy, sufficiently factbound to slip comfortably within the integument of Rule 52(a). See Boston Five Cents Savings Bank v. Secretary of the Dep't of HUD, 768 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir.1985) (if reasonable persons can differ about what a contract provision means, a question of fact is usually present); Edmonds, 642 F.2d at 881 (similar; there must be more than one "plausible definition" of the language to create a fact question); Singer Co., 579 F.2d at 439 (better rule is to submit issue of contractual intent to the factfinder "unless the evidence is so clear that no reasonable person would determine the issue but one way"). Indeed, the standard is no different if the matter is treated as a so-called "mixed" question. See Fortin v. Comm'r of Massachusetts Dep't of Public Welfare, 692 F.2d 790, 794 (1st Cir.1982) (finding based on mixed question of law and fact reviewable only for clear error); Sweeney v. Board of Trustees, 604 F.2d 106, 109 n. 2 (1st Cir.1979), cert. denied...