Sastry v. Coale

• Decision Date: 15 January 1991
• Docket Number: No. 89-605.,89-605.
• Citation: 585 A.2d 1324
• Parties: C.S. SASTRY, Appellant, v. John P. COALE, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

585 A.2d 1324

C.S. SASTRY, Appellant, v. John P. COALE, Appellee.

No. 89-605.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued October 24, 1990.

Decided January 15, 1991.

Sarabjit Singh, for appellant. Curt S. Hansen, for appellee.

Before STEADMAN and FARRELL, Associate Judges, and KERN, Senior Judge.

FARRELL, Associate Judge.

This litigation arose from an unsuccessful attempt to develop legal business in Bhopal, India among the victims of the disaster at the Union Carbide plant in 1984. C.S. Sastry, appellant, rendered services in support of the efforts of attorney John P. Coale, appellee, to locate potential clients in Bhopal. Sastry claims that Coale failed to pay full compensation for 800 hours of work. At the end of Sastry's case-in-chief, the trial judge granted Coale's motion for a directed verdict, concluding that because Sastry had presented inconsistent evidence about the terms of the compensation agreement and insufficient evidence of the value of his services, a valid jury verdict in his favor was impossible.

After reviewing the evidence presented in the light most favorable to appellant, we conclude that he established a prima facie case of breach of contract: he demonstrated the existence of an express or implied-infact contract for services which was fully performed, and he established a "reasonable basis on which to estimate damages." Romer v. District of Columbia, 449 A.2d 1097, 1100 (D.C.1982) (citations omitted). Therefore, we vacate the judgment and remand for further proceedings.

I.

Sastry, a self-employed men's clothing salesman, testified that he was familiar with the country of India and the city of Bhopal. Before becoming a salesman, he had worked in the international division of a corporation where he was a product marketing manager. In that job he traveled extensively in India and established both business and political contacts in Bhopal. He is fluent in Hindi, the dominant language spoken in Bhopal. Some of his family members live in India and he has property located there. He also knows employees of the embassy of India.

In December 1984, Coale heard about the disaster at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Having been a customer of Sastry's for a number of years, he arranged a meeting with him to discuss forming a "team" to develop legal business in Bhopal in the wake of the disaster. Sastry agreed to meet the next day in Coale's office. He, Coale, and two other individuals attended the meeting, at which Coale expressed enthusiasm about the venture and Sastry shared the "excitement." According to Sastry, Coale proposed paying him one third of his earnings from legal business in Bhopal for his services.¹ Coale and the other two participants decided to leave for Bhopal immediately, and asked Sastry to join them. Sastry agreed to do so for a fee of $3,000. At the time of the initial meeting, he did not know how much he would eventually be paid, but he agreed "to provide the help and service." Coale paid Sastry $3,000 and the group flew to India in December.

Sastry spent six days in Bhopal working for Coale.² His duties included making travel arrangements to and from India; contacting Bhopal city officials on behalf of Coale to arrange meetings with disaster victims; reviewing the Hindi translation of Coale's form retainer agreement for victims and coordinating the printing of the form agreements; and collecting, tabulating, and classifying retainer agreements executed by victims.

At the end of January 1985,³ Sastry decided to go to India on personal business for the month of February. When he told Coale of his plan, Coale replied, "As long as you are going to be in India I want you... to reestablish my position in Bhopal with the mayor and with the other people that we had established contact with." Regarding compensation, Sastry "kept reminding" Coale that the Bhopal work was "taking time away from my business" and "jeopardizing my income." Coale assured Sastry that the work would be "very well compensated." Sastry went to India in February and spent five days in Bhopal working for Coale.⁴ His duties included collecting executed retainer agreements and supervising the "field work" in Bhopal.

Sastry's last trip to India on Coale's behalf took place in July 1985.⁵ In early July Coale asked him to return to Bhopal as his "personal emissary" to "refine the agreement" and "collect the documents" pertinent to certain cases. In July Coale paid Sastry $4,000 for services but, according to Sastry, most of that cash "flowed through" him to cover expenses. Once in Bhopal, Sastry hand-carried a letter from Coale to a Bhopal official; insured the payment of the Bhopal staff workers by using his own property as collateral for a loan; obtained signatures for a movie release agreement; and obtained death certificates.⁶ Finally, from August through November 1985, Sastry continued working at his home and in Coale's office on tasks related to the Bhopal litigation.⁷ His employment relationship with Coale ended in January 1986.

In his testimony, Sastry acknowledged that he received $5,000 in payments for services from Coale,⁸ but claimed that this sum failed to compensate him for the total of 800 hours he spent on the Bhopal project from December 1984 through November 1985. On cross-examination, Sastry was pressed closely as to the compensation term of his agreement with Coale — specifically whether any payment for services other than the amounts he had received was contingent on a successful outcome. In the complaint he had asserted as fact that, at the original December meeting, Coale "offered to `split' his earnings or at least give 30 percent" and that "plaintiff accepted and then agreed to go with Coale and his associates." On direct examination, Sastry at first denied that it "was ... the idea at all" that he was to be paid strictly out of Coale's earnings in the litigation; he stated that their discussions about compensation essentially consisted of Sastry asking for (and receiving) $3,000 to cover the expected five days in India,⁹ and that thereafter he kept reminding Coale that the absence from his clothing business was jeopardizing his income. On cross-examination, however, Sastry conceded that Coale had "mentioned" at the initial meeting an offer to give Sastry "up to 30 percent" of any recovery. His testimony continued as follows:

Q. And then the last sentence in paragraph seven of the complaint says:

"Plaintiff accepted and then agreed to go with them." Is that correct?

A. All right.

Q. You accepted?

A. Uh-huh.

Q. You accepted an offer and that was the deal; correct?

A. Yeah.

Pressed to admit, therefore, that he was "not entitled to a cent" because Coale had earned nothing from the Bhopal litigation, Sastry balked and insisted that "that was not my agreement with Mr. Coale.... When he asked me to accompany him, why did he agree to give me $3,000 for four or five days' work?" On re-direct, he confirmed that "one of the ways" Coale had suggested for compensation was to "split his earnings or at least give 30 percent," but that "another form" was reflected in Sastry's insistence that he could only accompany Coale the first time if he received $3,000. On the basis of this demand and Coale's acceptance of it, Sastry understood that in the future he would be compensated similarly for his services — somewhere between his gross income from the clothing business of $100 to $125 per hour and his net income of $22 to $25 per hour.

The trial judge, in granting the motion for a directed verdict, acknowledged that Sastry's evidence supported the existence of an express oral contract for services. He concluded, however, that Sastry's testimony, summarized above, was fatally inconsistent in regard to the compensation term, pointing both to a pure contingent agreement and, at the same time, an agreement for "substantial" compensation for services rendered, though without agreement on a precise formula. This inconsistency, the judge reasoned, made it impossible for "a reasonable juror to determine which of these two scenarios was the accurate one."

Furthermore, whichever scenario the jury selected, the judge concluded they would reach the same verdict because there was insufficient evidence of the value of Sastry's services. If the jury found an explicit oral contingency arrangement, they would find no liability since the evidence showed Coale had never earned money on the Bhopal litigation project. If they found the parties had left the terms of compensation open, then Sastry had failed to produce "any real evidence as to how any of these types of services"—including liaison and "paralegal" work—"were or should be valued," and thus the amount of damages would be speculation. Since the jury's verdict for Coale would have to be the same under either interpretation, the court entered judgment for Coale.

II.

"A verdict may be directed only when the evidence is so clear that reasonable men could reach but one conclusion." Bauman v. Sragow, 308 A.2d 243, 244 (D.C.1973). In acting upon such a motion, "the judge is not the trier of fact; thus, he must deny the motion if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the plaintiff has established a prima facie case." Marshall v. District of Columbia, 391 A.2d 1374, 1379 (D.C.1978). Of particular note in a case such as this where plaintiff's credibility was severely tested by cross-examination, the court in ruling on the motion may not substitute its judgment as to the reliability or weight of testimony for the jury's. See, e.g., Baltimore & Ohio R.R. v. Corbin, 73 App.D.C. 124, 126, 118 F.2d 9, 11 (1940) (jury issue "whether attempted impeachment of plaintiff's witness was successful"); Myers v. Gaither, 232 A.2d 577 (D.C.1967), aff'd in pertinent part, 131 U.S.App.D.C. 216, 404 F.2d 216 (1968) (submission of case to jury required when inconsistent and contradictory testimony raises issue of witness credibility).

We...