Opinion ID: 2067059
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sufficiency of the Evidence of Damages

Text: The jury awarded Columbia $18 million in damages proximately caused by NCRIC's interference with the hospital's business relations with its physicians$13 million for losses sustained before the hospital closed and an additional $5 million for post-closing loss. NCRIC disputes the sufficiency of the evidence to support the award; it asserts the trial court erred by allowing the jury to award tort damages based on (1) a legally flawed damages theory, and (2) speculative and logically incoherent damages evidence. [28] The principles governing our review of NCRIC's sufficiency challenge to the damages award are well-established. We are obliged to respect the jury's prerogatives. A trial court may grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law only if no reasonable juror, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party, could have reached the verdict in that party's favor. [29] Our review in this connection is de novo, applying the same legal standard as the trial court. The trial court has more leeway to evaluate the probative value of the evidence in deciding whether to grant a new trial, and its decision on that score is subject to reversal only for abuse of discretion. [30] The scope of appellate review is especially narrow when the trial court denied the motion, as in that case the trial court's unique opportunity to consider the evidence in the context of a living trial coalesces with the deference given to the jury's determination of such matters of fact as the weight of the evidence. [31] These principles of deference to the jury are especially applicable to its determination of damages. A plaintiff need prove damages only with reasonable certainty. While an award may not be based on speculation or guesswork, it may be a just and reasonable estimate based on relevant data. Probable and inferential considerations as well as direct and positive proof may provide the basis for an award.[ [32] ] The evidence offered must form an adequate basis for a reasoned judgment; [33] mathematical precision is not required. [34] Furthermore, the courts quite reasonably have been very liberal in permitting the jury to award damages where the uncertainty as to their extent arises from the nature of the wrong itself, for which the defendant, and not the plaintiff, is responsible. [35] Where the jury finds a particular quantum of damages and the trial judge refuses to disturb its findings on the motion for a new trial ... an appellate court should be certain indeed that the award is contrary to all reason before it orders a remittitur or a new trial. [36] At trial, Columbia linked the bulk of its claimed damages to the loss of net revenue caused by the NCRIC-induced departures of many of its attending physicians. According to Columbia's chairman and its CEO, the hospital's annual gross revenues dropped by ten million dollars. The witnesses attributed this gross revenue loss to the sudden drop in patient referrals, which were the hospital's main source of income. [37] Assuming Columbia operated at a marginal cost rate of 30%a conservative estimate, according to Peter Ben Ezra, a certified public accountant familiar with Columbia's finances [38] its annual net revenues dropped by $7 million. In addition, Ben Ezra testified that he calculated the present value of the lost cash flow from the decline in admissions assuming a permanent loss of twenty-four physicians on Columbia's staff as a result of NCRIC's interference. Using a 30% marginal cost rate and a discount rate of 10.5%, Ben Ezra computed that Columbia lost approximately $5 million before it closed and would have lost $21 million to $22 million over a twenty-year time frame had it survived. The chairman of Columbia's Board, Dr. Rifka, identified another component of its damages from NCRIC's tortious interference. Dr. Rifka testified that Congress had appropriated $5 million to support the hospital's on-going community outreach programs in 2002. Columbia was unable to collect that grant and use it to defray the costs of its operations before it was forced to close. On its face, Columbia's evidence of its damages was sufficient to support the award. Even if the jury rejected Ben Ezra's optimistic long-term cash flow projections in their entirety, it still could have found that Columbia's annual net patient revenues (gross revenues less marginal costs) declined by $7 million in the near-term as a result of NCRIC's conduct. In his closing argument, Columbia's counsel expressly urged the jury to use that figure to calculate the hospital's damages. To compensate Columbia for its lost revenues in the twenty-two months before it ceased operations, counsel thus requested $13 million, [39] which was precisely what the jury awarded for that period. On the same principle, and on the premise that Columbia would have survived at least three more years without NCRIC's tortious interference, counsel asked for an additional $21 million as post-closing damages. He reminded the jury that even NCRIC's expert witness had opined Columbia might have survived one year. The jury's actual award of $5 million in post-closing damages was supported on the conservative assumption that Columbia would have continued operating for as little as nine months. [40] If the jury calculated Columbia's lost revenues as its counsel proposed, it did not award any compensation for its lost congressional appropriation (which counsel had sought as part of the hospital's pre-closing damages). While the jury could have based its damages award on other reasonable permutations of the evidence, we need notand indeed cannotreconstruct the precise mathematical formula that the jury adopted. Nor need we explore every possible quantitative analysis or compute the basis of each penny and dollar in the award. [41] The jury's award will be upheld as long as it is a `just and reasonable estimate based on relevant data,' even if it is not proven with mathematical precision. [42] We turn now to NCRIC's challenges to the sufficiency of the foregoing evidence to support the jury's award. Most of those challenges were not preserved for appellate review. In a civil jury trial, Civil Rule 50(a) requires a party to assert its specific claims of evidentiary insufficiency in a motion for judgment as a matter of law before the case is submitted to the jury. [43] One important purpose of this requirement is to call the attention of the opposing party to the alleged deficiency in the evidence at a point in the trial where that party may cure the defect by presentation of further evidence. [44] The failure to assert a particular sufficiency challenge in a Rule 50(a) motion precludes consideration of that challenge on appeal. [45] NCRIC's principal claim is that the evidence does not support the jury's award because Columbia's theory of damages was flawed. Specifically, NCRIC argues that hypothetical lost profits are not a proper measure of Columbia's damages because Columbia has never been a profitable business. [46] Moreover, NCRIC contends, Columbia calculated its lost revenue stream improperly, because it should have reduced its hypothetical gross patient revenues by its total costs (i.e., including its fixed costs) rather than just its marginal costs (i.e., its variable costs). Relatedly, NCRIC also claims there was insufficient evidence at trial to link the $10 million drop in Columbia's patient revenues to NCRIC or to justify Ben Ezra's adoption of a marginal cost rate of 30% (as opposed to some other, significantly higher percentage). The factual and legal merits of these contentions are debatable, butmore importantlyNCRIC did not include them in its Rule 50(a) motions for judgment as a matter of law. [47] We decline to consider them. NCRIC also argues that the lost congressional appropriation for Columbia's community outreach programs cannot support the jury's award because it was not adjusted downward to reflect the expenses the hospital would have incurred in carrying out those programs. [48] We decline to address this issue because, once again, NCRIC did not preserve it by appropriate objection at trial. When Columbia's counsel argued to the jury that the appropriated funds would have gone straight to the bottom line, NCRIC did not object or dispute the assertion. Nor did NCRIC raise Columbia's failure to set off its outreach program costs against the congressional appropriation in its Rule 50(a) motions during trial. NCRIC first mentioned that defect in its renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law after the verdict, which it filed pursuant to Civil Rule 50(b). [49] That was too late; new grounds may not be asserted in the post-verdict motion. [50] Lastly, NCRIC challenges Ben Ezra's expert opinion testimony as being too speculative (or flatly disproved by the evidence) because he assumed that: (1) Columbia would have remained alive for twenty-five years but for NCRIC's interference; (2) at least twenty-four physicians left Columbia because of NCRIC's conduct; and (3) those physicians would have stayed for twenty years or longer (until they retired at age sixty-five) but for NCRIC's interference. We are satisfied NCRIC preserved this challenge. However, although Ben Ezra's premises were questionable, there was at least some evidence to support their reasonableness. As discussed above, the evidence permitted the jury to ascribe the mass departure of physicians from Columbia to NCRIC's interference and to disbelieve the doctors who claimed they left for other, unrelated reasons. There also was testimony regarding Columbia's enhanced viability following its emergence from bankruptcy and of the long-term loyalty of its attending physicians. The shortcomings in Ben Ezra's analysis were exposed and probed at trial; we agree with the trial court that they went to the weight of his testimony rather than its admissibility and therefore were for the jury to assess. Moreover, in awarding only $5 million in post-closing damages, the jury evidently rejected Ben Ezra's loss projections as too speculative. The jury had other evidencespecifically, the abrupt drop in Columbia's annual revenues after a large proportion of its doctors lefton which to base its verdict.