Both involve contempt charges against a litigant, but they take very different approaches.
The first opinion was published yesterday, and arose out of the high-profile Epic v. Apple dispute. There, Epic (the maker of Fortnite) sued Apple, claiming that was an antitrust violation for Apple to prohibit Epic from allowing users to purchase game-related content outside of Apple's own store (for which Apple took a hefty commission). The trial court agreed, and granted an injunction that barred Apple from stopping Epic from making sales outside of Apple's platform.
Thereafter, Apple, with the advice of sophisticated counsel, circumvented the injunction while technically complying with its terms. Consistent with the injunction, after the injunction, Apple allowed Epic to sell content on its own. But Apple instituted a mandatory royalty rate that was essentially the exact same as the commission that it had previously obtained from Epic on the earlier Apple-mandated internal sales.
The district court said: "No dice. Contempt." And the Ninth Circuit largely affirmed. Apple's conduct admittedly followed the literal terms of the injunction, but the Ninth Circuit held that the finding of contempt was proper because there was, as here, "a violation of the spirit of the
injunction, even though its strict letter may not have been
disregarded."
Then, today, the California Court of Appeal publishes an opinion in a different, but doctrinally very similar, contempt case. There, a couple had nasty divorce proceedings, and the trial court granted joint custody over the child, with one of the parents (who lived hundreds of miles away) to have weekend visitation. In order to permit meaningful visitation, the trial court also ordered: "Neither
parent shall schedule any school events, extracurricular or religious events,
medical or therapeutic appointments, or other events during the other
parent’s custodial time without approval of the other parent."
Notwithstanding this order, one of the parents -- the one with primary physical custody -- signed the child up for various sports activities that occurred during the other parent's weekend visitation period. A school mountain bike competition. The ski team, with weekend ski competitions. The basketball team, which had (again) weekend games. The other former spouse objected, saying that this conduct, which was performed without her input or consent, interfered with her visitation period and violated the trial court's order, since it meant that she'd fly up from Orange County (to Nevada City) for her weekend only to have it taken up by activities that the other parent had unilaterally set. The trial court agreed, found the parent in contempt, and imposed a $2,000 per violation penalty.
But the Court of Appeal reversed. Taking the exactly opposite approach of the Ninth Circuit, the Court of Appeal held that even if the parent's conduct conflicted with the spirit and intent of the trial court's order, since it didn't violate the "literal words" of the order, there was no basis for a contempt penalty. Since the order only prohibited the parent from "scheduling . . . any events," and since it was technically the school who "scheduled" the underlying events for any particular weekend, the Court of Appeal held that the trial court couldn't permissibly find contempt. "[W]hile the sports teams did result
in some of Xander’s activities occurring during Larsen’s parenting time,
Houser did not schedule those events, the teams did, and thus she did not
violate the letter of the order." (emphasis in original)
Again, interesting that these two opinions are published within 24 hours of each other.
