Page 101 - Economic Damages Calculation

timony pertaining to the defamation and tortious interference claims, arguing, among other things, that
the plaintiff failed to produce any evidence concerning issues of causation.

The defendant argued that its actions did not cause the plaintiff’s financial problems. Specifically, they
asserted the following, among other things:

• The plaintiff’s financial performance had been in decline prior to the changes in the FMSA due
to substantially decreasing profit margins.

• The plaintiff had only begun seeking customers to sell used laser printers that had been manufac-
tured by the defendant in October 1986 and had ceased soliciting customers for used printers on-
ly eight months later in May 1987.

• The plaintiff did not actually go out of business until November 1988, more than a year and a
half after it stopped soliciting new buyers.

• The plaintiff filed suit against an officer and other employees for neglect of duty, defections,
misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, tortious interference and unfair competi-
tion.

The plaintiff's damages expert, however, attributed all purported losses to the defendant’s actions. The
Eighth Circuit ruled that the plaintiff failed to differentiate losses caused by the FMSA supplement from
other causes of its decline.

[The Plaintiff’s] own assertions and the statements of its own damage expert witnesses strongly
suggest, however, that [the Plaintiff’s] decline was caused at least partly by, if not substantially
or mainly by, other factors than [the Defendant’s] alleged antitrust violations, and that in 1985
those other factors had already caused and were continuing to cause some decline on [the Plain-
tiff’s] part. fn 1

Specifically, the court ruled that no evidence was presented linking the defendant's behavior to its pur-
ported damages:

In the face of such evidence of other causes for [the Plaintiff’s] decline, [the Plaintiff] offered
only the bald assertions of its expert witnesses that but for [the Defendant’s] use of its 1987 sup-
plement [the Plaintiff] would not have gone out of business... there was insufficient evidence to
enable the jury reasonably to find that but for [the Defendant’s] allegedly tortious actions [the
Plaintiff] would not have gone out of business. fn 2

With respect to the defamation and tortious interference award, the Eighth Circuit also ruled in favor of
the defendant and reversed the jury’s award, holding as follows:

[The Plaintiff’s] claim that it would have sold $1,000,000 worth of business to [its customer] in
1987 absent [the Defendant’s] alleged interference fares no better. While [the Plaintiff] presented

fn 1 Id. 1495.

fn 2 Id. at 1508–09.

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