Williamsburg Wax Museum, Inc. v. Historic Figures, Inc.

810 F.2d 243, 258 U.S. App. D.C. 124
CourtCourt of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
DecidedJanuary 27, 1987
DocketNos. 85-5964, 85-5965 and 85-5975
StatusPublished
Cited by164 cases

This text of 810 F.2d 243 (Williamsburg Wax Museum, Inc. v. Historic Figures, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williamsburg Wax Museum, Inc. v. Historic Figures, Inc., 810 F.2d 243, 258 U.S. App. D.C. 124 (D.C. Cir. 1987).

Opinion

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge MIKVA.

MIKVA, Circuit Judge:

These three consolidated anti-trust cases are before this court for the second time. The underlying litigation has been in progress for almost a decade. Appellants are three wax museums: Williamsburg Wax Museum (“Williamsburg”); National Civil War Wax Museum (“Gettysburg”); and National Souvenir Center (“Gatlinburg”). They appeal four separate actions of the district court: its denial of appellant Gatlinburg’s motion for leave to amend its complaint; its order increasing the post-judgment interest rate on an earlier judgment entered against all three appellants; its method of calculating holdover rent owed by Gatlinburg for property leased from appellee Lynch; and its ultimate dismissal of Gatlinburg’s antitrust claims on appellee’s motion for summary judgment.

For the reasons stated below, we affirm the district court in all respects, except for its order amending the rate of post-judgment interest, which we vacate.

I. Background

Our opinion in the first appeal of this case spells out the facts in great detail. See National Souvenir Center, Inc. v. Historic Figures, Inc., 728 F.2d 503 (D.C. Cir.1984), affg in part and vacating and remanding in part, 554 F.Supp. 182 (D.D. C.1982), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 825, 105 S.Ct. 103, 83 L.Ed.2d 48 (1984). Accordingly, we set forth only those facts which are relevant to the present appeal. As noted above, appellants are three wax museums. Appellee Lynch Display Corporation (“Lynch”) manufactures plastic display figures for wax museums, and appellee Earl Dorfman is Lynch’s founder and President. Appellee Historic Figures, Inc. (“Historic”) is a wax museum with exclusive rights to sell Lynch’s figures. Appellee National Historical Museum, Inc. (“National”), a subsidiary of Historic, handled the sale of the Lynch figures.

National sold Lynch figures to appellants Gettysburg (in 1960) and Williamsburg (in 1967), and as part of the sale required both museums to enter into “franchise agreements.” These agreements required National to assist them in establishing their museums and required the museums in return to pay National 5% of their gross receipts for a period of twenty years. In 1962, appellant Gatlinburg leased Lynch figures directly from Lynch for a term of approximately twenty years, conditional on its entering into a franchise agreement with National similar to those entered into by the other museums. The lease called for rent of 10% of Gatlinburg’s gross receipts, and holdover rent at that same rate if Gatlinburg did not return the figures at the end of the term. Gross receipts were defined as all of the proceeds from any of the museum’s displays or exhibits.

In 1977, appellants filed these antitrust suits. All three appellants claimed that appellees illegally tied the sale or lease of Lynch figures to the franchise agreements, in contravention of the Clayton Act, 15 U:S.C. §§ 12 et seq. (1982). (These antitrust claims are not relevant to the instant appeal.) Appellant Gatlinburg further alleged that appellees, through and by their agreements with each other as well as their leasing policies, violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1, 2 (1982) (the “monopolization claims”). The Section 1 claim asserted essentially that appellees had combined and conspired to restrain trade in the wax figure market. The Section 2 claim alleged that appellees had monopoly power in the wax figure market, and that they had unlawfully exercised that power by requiring Gatlinburg to lease its figures and to pay “exorbitant” prices. On filing suit, all three appellants stopped paying the fees due under their [127]*127franchise agreements, and Gatlinburg stopped paying the rent to Lynch under its lease. Appellees counterclaimed for the money owed under the franchise agreements and the lease.

In 1978, appellees moved for summary judgment on their counterclaims and on all of appellants’ antitrust claims. In 1981, after limited discovery, the district court denied summary judgment on the antitrust claims, finding that there were material questions of fact in controversy. Memorandum Order, May 19, 1981. The court found appellants liable on appellees’ counterclaims, id., and later it awarded damages on those counterclaims, ordering appellants to pay appellees all of the money due under the franchise and lease agreements as well as pre- and post-judgment interest calculated at six percent, Order and Final Judgment, September 3, 1982.

Thereafter, appellees moved for summary judgment on appellants’ tying claims, arguing that they were barred by the Clayton Act’s four year statute of limitation, 15 U.S.C. § 15b. The district court granted the motion. Williamsburg Wax Museum, Inc. v. Historic Figures, Inc., 554 F.Supp. 182 (D.D.C.1982). This left only Gatlinburg’s monopolization claims, id. at 183 n. 5, 186 n. 16, and appellees moved for summary judgment on these claims also, again relying on a statute of limitations rationale. The district court ruled in appellees favor, dismissing the lease claims. Memorandum, Jan. 31, 1983.

Appellants then appealed the dismissal of all of their antitrust claims, as well as several portions of the damages award, to this court. National Souvenir Center, supra, 728 F.2d 503. We affirmed the dismissal of the tying claims, id. at 513, but found that despite our reservations about the substantive validity of the claims, “the statute of limitations [was] not a proper ground for dismissing the monopolization claims,” id. at 513-14. We affirmed the challenged portions of the damages award in all relevant respects. Id. at 514-17. In addition, we noted that Gatlinburg had raised a new issue — alleging that appellees’ leasing policies, which included resale restrictions, were designed to preclude a secondhand market in Lynch figures. We left it to the district court to decide whether or not to entertain this belated attempt to raise this issue. Id. at 513 n. 8.

The facts discussed above set the stage for a host of motions by both sides. At issue in this appeal is the district court’s disposition of four of those motions.

First, upon remand, Gatlinburg moved to amend its complaint to include allegations concerning the preclusion of a secondhand market. The district court denied this motion. Memorandum Order, June 25, 1985.

Meanwhile, appellants paid the judgment on appellees’ counterclaims in full, including interest. Appellees subsequently discovered that the statutory post-judgment interest rate at the time that damages were awarded was fourteen percent, not six percent. The second motion sought to amend the district court’s September, 1982 order, to allow such higher interest. The district court granted appellees’ motion. Memorandum Order, May 22, 1985.

The third motion dealt with holdover rent. Because Gatlinburg had not returned the Lynch figures upon expiration of its lease, appellee Lynch moved for an order requiring Gatlinburg to pay holdover rent.

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Bluebook (online)
810 F.2d 243, 258 U.S. App. D.C. 124, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williamsburg-wax-museum-inc-v-historic-figures-inc-cadc-1987.