real authority

In February 1971, William Matlock was indicted for robbing a federally insured bank in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113. A week later he filed a motion to suppress evidence seized from a home in Pardeeville, Wisconsin, where he had been living. Suppression hearings followed in the District Court. On November 12, 1970, Matlock was arrested in the yard in front of the home leased by Mr. and Mrs. Marshall. Living in the home were Mrs. Marshall, several of her children including her daughter Gayle Graff, Graff's three-year-old son, and Matlock. Three arresting officers went to the door, were admitted by Graff, told her they were looking for money and a gun, and asked if they could search the house. Graff consented voluntarily to the search of the house, including the east bedroom on the second floor which she said was jointly occupied by Matlock and herself. The east bedroom was searched and $4,995 in cash was found in a diaper bag in the only closet in the room. Graff made statements to the officers that she and Matlock occupied the east bedroom together, shared the dresser, and had slept together regularly in the room including the early morning of November 12. Other evidence showed Matlock and Graff had lived together in a one-bedroom apartment in Florida from April to August 1970, lived at the Marshall home from August to November 12, 1970, were seen going up or down stairs together, and that the east bedroom contained evidence it was lived in by a man and a woman. At the suppression hearings the District Court excluded as inadmissible hearsay Graff's out-of-court statements about joint occupancy as well as statements by both Graff and Matlock that they were husband and wife. The court concluded the remaining evidence was insufficient to prove to a reasonable certainty that Graff and Matlock were living together in the east bedroom at the time of the search. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court judgment in all respects. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

In 1981, Lemmie L. Ruffin, Jr., an Alabama-licensed agent for petitioner Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company, also served as a licensed agent for Union Fidelity Life Insurance Company, a distinct and nonaffiliated entity. Respondents Cleopatra Haslip, Cynthia Craig, Alma M. Calhoun, and Eddie Hargrove were employees of Roosevelt City, an Alabama municipality. Ruffin, presenting himself as an agent of Pacific Mutual, solicited the city for both health and life insurance for its employees and gave the city a single proposal for both coverages from the two insurers. The city approved, and in August 1981 Ruffin prepared separate applications for group health coverage with Union and individual life policies with Pacific Mutual, with initial premium payments submitted to the insurers. An arrangement was made for Union to send its billings for health premiums to Ruffin at Pacific Mutual's Birmingham office, with premium payments effected through payroll deductions. The city clerk each month issued a check for those premiums that was sent to Ruffin or picked up by him. Ruffin did not remit to Union the premium payments received from the city; instead, he misappropriated most of them. In late 1981, when Union did not receive payment, it sent notices of lapsed health coverage to respondents in care of Ruffin and Patrick Lupia, Pacific Mutual's agent-in-charge of its Birmingham office, but those notices were not forwarded to respondents. The trial court found that respondents did not know that their health policies had been canceled. Respondent Haslip was hospitalized on January 23, 1982, and incurred hospital and physician's charges. Because the hospital could not confirm health coverage, it required Haslip, upon her discharge, to make a payment upon her bill. Her physician, when he was not paid, placed her account with a collection agency that obtained a judgment against Haslip, adversely affecting her credit. In May 1982, respondents filed this suit in the Circuit Court for Jefferson County, Alabama, naming as defendants Pacific Mutual and Ruffin individually and as a proprietorship. The suit alleged that Ruffin collected premiums but failed to remit them so that respondents' health insurance policies lapsed without their knowledge, and damages for fraud were claimed. The case against Pacific Mutual was submitted to the jury under a theory of respondeat superior. Following the trial court's charge on liability, the jury was instructed that if it determined there was liability for fraud, it could award punitive damages. The jury returned general verdicts for respondents against Pacific Mutual and Ruffin in the amounts of $1,040,000 for Haslip, $15,290 for Calhoun, $12,400 for Craig, and $10,288 for Hargrove. Judgments were entered accordingly. On Pacific Mutual's appeal, the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed the judgments by a divided vote. Pacific Mutual then brought the case to the United States Supreme Court, which granted certiorari to review the punitive damages procedures and award.

The petitioners were subpoenaed to testify at a hearing conducted by the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor concerning a work stoppage at the Hoboken, New Jersey, piers. After refusing to answer questions about the stoppage on the ground that the answers might tend to incriminate them, petitioners were granted immunity from prosecution under the laws of New Jersey and New York. When they persisted in their refusal to answer the questions on the additional ground that the answers might tend to incriminate them under federal law, they were held in civil and criminal contempt of court. The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed the criminal contempt conviction on procedural grounds but affirmed the civil contempt judgments on the merits. The court relied on prior decisions holding that a state may constitutionally compel a witness to give testimony which might be used in a federal prosecution against him. At a prior hearing, petitioners had refused to answer the questions on the ground that the Commission lacked statutory authority to investigate the work stoppage. That claim was litigated through the state courts and rejected. Petitioners purged themselves of an earlier contempt before raising the self-incrimination objection. The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor is a bistate body established under an interstate compact approved by Congress. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the important constitutional questions involved in this case. The New Jersey statute under which immunity was granted provided that the witness could not be prosecuted under the laws of New Jersey or New York for any matter concerning which he testified. It did not purport to grant immunity from federal prosecution.

In 1974 Mechelle Vinson met Sidney Taylor, a vice president and branch manager of what is now Meritor Savings Bank. Taylor provided Vinson an employment application, hired her the next day as a teller-trainee, and supervised her subsequent promotions to teller, head teller, and assistant branch manager over four years at the same branch, all based on merit alone. In September 1978 Vinson notified Taylor she was taking indefinite sick leave. The bank discharged her on November 1, 1978, for excessive use of that leave. Vinson sued Taylor and the bank, alleging she had constantly been subjected to sexual harassment by Taylor throughout her employment. At the eleven-day bench trial Vinson testified that Taylor initially acted in a fatherly manner. He soon invited her to dinner and suggested they go to a motel for sexual relations, which she eventually agreed to out of fear of losing her job. She further testified that Taylor made repeated demands for sexual favors at the branch. They had intercourse some forty or fifty times over several years. He fondled her in front of other employees, followed her into the women's restroom, exposed himself, and forcibly raped her on several occasions. These activities stopped after 1977 when she began a steady relationship. Taylor denied all allegations of sexual activity or advances and claimed the accusations arose from a business dispute. The bank denied any knowledge of such conduct. The District Court denied relief without resolving whether a sexual relationship existed between Vinson and Taylor. It found instead that any such relationship would have been voluntary and unrelated to her employment, advancement, or promotions. The court concluded that Vinson was not the victim of sexual harassment or discrimination and determined that the bank lacked notice of Taylor's alleged actions and therefore could not be held liable. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed and remanded for further proceedings on a hostile-environment theory. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 1985.