Samos Imex v. Nextel Communication ( 1999 )

USCA1 Opinion

                 United States Court of Appeals

                     For the First Circuit











No. 98-2126



                     SAMOS IMEX CORPORATION,



                      Plaintiff, Appellant,



                                v.



                   NEXTEL COMMUNICATIONS, INC.,



                       Defendant, Appellee,



                                v.



              BROOK HILL ENTERPRISES, INC., ET AL.,



                     Third-Party Defendants.







           APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT



                FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS



           [Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]







                              Before



                     Boudin, Circuit Judge,

                   Cyr, Senior Circuit Judge,

                   and Lynch, Circuit Judge.









     Herbert Abrams with whom Barry C. Klickstein and Abrams,

Roberts, Klickstein & Levy were on brief for appellant.

     Maia Aparo Moran with whom F.J. McDonald and Law Offices of

F.J. McDonald were on brief for appellee.











October 26, 1999











  BOUDIN, Circuit Judge.  In June 1997, plaintiff-appellant

Samos Imex Corporation sued Nextel Communications, Inc. in the

federal district court in Massachusetts.  The gist of the complaint

was that in 1995, Nextel had constructed an antenna or "monopole,"

over 100 feet high, within several feet of a building leased and

occupied by Samos Imex under a lease that required Samos Imex to

make repairs to the building.  Samos Imex claimed that the antenna,

which itself involved subsurface construction, had caused Samos

Imex's building to shift, resulting in structural damage and

rendering its freight elevator inoperative.

  Prior to the suit being filed, John Carota, a structural

engineering expert, gave Samos Imex a report evaluating the

condition of the building, recommending repairs, and identifying

"the probable cause" of the damage to the building and the freight

elevator.  The probable cause section of the report began by

concluding that "[t]he probable cause of the recent movement and

racking [i.e., shifting] [of] this three story brick building . .

. can be directly attributed to the building responding to the

effects of constructing the monopole project."  The report then

identified  various "aspects" of the antenna project that "either

singularly or in combination could have caused the failed elevator

and cracked building support columns and walls."

  This document, which was prepared in advance of the

litigation, was the only disclosure of anticipated expert testimony

made by Samos Imex by the time of the discovery deadline for

plaintiff's expert testimony.  Thereafter, Nextel moved to exclude

Carota's testimony and for summary judgment.  It argued that the

Carota report was not accompanied by other information required by

Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B), such as exhibits to be used at trial

by the expert, a list of his publications, disclosure of

compensation, and a list of other cases in which the expert has

testified within the preceding four years.  In the same motion,

Nextel sought summary judgment on the separate ground that the

report, even if believed, did not establish that the antenna had

more likely than not caused the harm complained of; rather,

according to Nextel, the report dwelt solely in "could haves" and

"possibilities."

  In August 1998, the district court heard oral argument

and decided the matter from the bench.  It rejected the request to

exclude the engineering report as a sanction for violation of

discovery rules, but it entered summary judgment on the ground that

the report did not purport to establish that "more probably than

not" the antenna construction was the cause of the damage--the

threshold of proof that the court said was inherent in the

preponderance of the evidence standard that generally applies in

civil cases.

  In the hearing, counsel for Samos Imex responded to the

court that Carota would testify that when he used the phrase "the

probable cause" in his report, he meant "more likely than not."

The court said that it understood the proffer to mean that if

Carota was called to the stand "he would answer that more likely

than not the shifting of the building which caused the elevator to

bind was [caused by] the Nextel pole."  However, the court said

that to accept this proffer as modifying the report would undermine

proper case management and discovery rules and that the report

itself remained "inadequate given the required standard."

  Samos Imex now appeals and, reviewing the grant of

summary judgment de novo, see Cadle Co. v. Hayes, 116 F.3d 957, 960

(1st Cir. 1997), we reverse.  The phrase "probable cause" is used,

in the narrow confines of Fourth Amendment precedent, to establish

a standard less demanding than "more probable than not."  For

example, arrests--made long before all proof is assembled for a

trial--can be justified as based on probable cause by showing a

reasonable basis for belief that a suspect committed a crime; in

many cases such a basis exists without a 50 percent-plus likelihood

that the suspect is guilty.  See, e.g., United States v. Garcia,

179 F.3d 265, 269 (5th Cir. 1999); cf. United States v. Sokolow,

490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989).

  The standard is obviously higher at trial where, in a

civil suit for negligence, the plaintiff must normally show both

fault and causation.  To establish the latter, plaintiff must show

that it is more probable than not that the injury was caused by the

action or event (or a combination of them) for which the defendant

was responsible.  See, e.g., Forlano v. Hughes, 471 N.E.2d 1315,

1319-20 (Mass. 1984); Bigwood v. Boston & N. St. Ry. Co., 95 N.E.2d

751, 752 (Mass. 1911).  And laymen and many judges might easily

refer to such a cause as "the probable cause" of an accident,

meaning that it was the more likely than not cause.

  Words like "probable" and "likely" are highly elastic in

common use, which is why they are often surrounded by other phrases

("more probable than not", "a reasonable likelihood"), that

sometimes lend greater precision and sometimes do not.  When a

magistrate judge speaks of "probable cause" in a suppression

hearing, we assume that he means a reasonable basis sufficient to

satisfy the Fourth Amendment; but if a doctor testified on the

stand that the probable cause of death was a heart attack, he might

be expected to mean that the heart attack was more likely than not

the cause of death.  If the doctor meant only that a heart attack

was merely one possible cause among others, it would be up to the

opposing counsel to draw this out on cross-examination.

  In all events, counsel for the plaintiff made an

immediate proffer that the expert would testify that the monopole

was more likely than not the cause of the injury and that that was

what he had intended by use of the phrase "probable cause" in the

report.  If there were any doubt, it would be easy enough to

conduct a brief deposition of the witness.  It is one thing to

allow counsel to contradict by proffer something the expert said in

the report or to supply a manifest omission; in that event, case

management and discovery concerns would be legitimate objections.

But it is hard to justify dismissal of a case on summary judgment,

based on what is at worst ambiguous language, in the face of an

explicit proffer by counsel that the witness meant just what many

readers would expect the witness to have intended.

  Admittedly, further in the Carota report he used phrases

like "could have caused" and the like, and Nextel presses this

point on appeal.  But the main use of these phrases, which occur in

the same paragraph as the "probable cause" statement, are actually

references to multiple causes all of which related to the

construction or operation of the antenna and for all of which

Nextel would likely be responsible (absent some further

explanation).  So long as Nextel was responsible for all of the

possible causes, it would not matter whether the precise causal

path could be identified.  See, e.g., Solimene v. B. Grauel & Co.,

507 N.E.2d 662, 667 & n.12 (Mass. 1987); Carey v. General Motors

Corp., 387 Mass. N.E.2d 583, 585-86 (Mass. 1979).

  This is not a case in which the witness mouths the proper

conclusion but the detailed explanation in his report or proffered

testimony clearly contradicts or provides no arguable foundation

for the conclusion.  See, e.g., Colantuonis v. Alfred Calcagni &

Sons, Inc., 44 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1994).  Nor does this appear to

be a case in which the expert was talking generally about why

buildings collapse without reaching a conclusion as to why this

specific building had shifted; on the contrary, the pivotal

sentence in the probable cause section of the report (quoted above)

spoke of "the probable cause" of the shifting of "this three-story

brick building."  Nextel was free to depose Carota to clarify his

"could have" references, but it was not entitled to summary

judgment on the present state of the record.

  Nextel asks us to affirm the district court's decision on

a distinct "alternative" ground, namely, the alleged failure of

Nextel to comply with discovery rules by furnishing required

information about the expert.  At one point in the transcript the

district court appears squarely to have rejected such a claim of

violation as the basis for excluding Carota's testimony, hardly a

choice comprising a patent abuse of discretion.  In effect, Nextel

is asking us to conclude that there was a violation of the

discovery rules and that it was of such a character as to compel

the district court to exclude the report as a sanction for this

violation.

  It is quite true that as amended, the civil procedure

rules make clear that exclusion of evidence is a standard sanction

for a violation of duty of disclosure under Rule 26(a).  See Fed.

R. Civ. P. 37(c); Klonoski v. Mahlab, 156 F.3d 255 (1st Cir. 1998).

But this is far from saying that the district court is obligated to

exclude evidence based on a failure, long before trial and likely

subject to correction without much harm to the opposing party; nor

do we know whether there may be some "justification" for any

failure to disclose.  See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c).  In all events, on

remand the district court is free to enforce its discovery rules by

ordering compliance, sanctions, or any other appropriate remedy.

  We have no bias whatever against summary judgment or

against opinions from the bench, both of which are often marks of

efficient management.  But where a building incurs harm after

significant nearby construction and an expert calls the

construction "the probable cause," we think that more is needed to

support summary judgment than an easily resolved doubt as to

whether the expert meant "more probable than not."  There may well

be more to the story, but we can only act on what the record

discloses.  Nothing precludes a renewed motion for summary judgment

if and when Carota is deposed.

  The judgment of the district court is reversed and the

matter remanded for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion.

  It is so ordered.