Opinion ID: 180432
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Barkan's Development of Additional Stores

Text: Although Barkan's failure on the first causal link suffices to affirm the district court's judgment as a matter of law, we nonetheless also find that Barkan failed to present sufficient evidence that Barkan would have successfully opened additional stores but for CIT's refusal to restructure the debt. By 2004, Barkan's network of stores was plagued by financial difficulty, and Dunkin' Donuts representatives had threatened to block his development of new stores because of what they viewed as substandard conditions at his existing locations. Although Barkan may have taken preliminary steps to develop additional stores throughout Rhode Island, he failed to demonstrate how, given the struggles his franchises faced, the restructuring could have put him in a position to take the next step and actually open the additional stores. For example, other than the unsubstantiated suggestion that the DMS Group would have continued to finance him, Barkan offered no evidence as to how he would have obtained the significant capital presumably required to open any new location. As noted by the district court, the restructuring itself would not have infused Barkan with additional money, but would only have temporarily decreased his monthly obligationswhich by 2004 he was not paying anyway. Under these circumstances, a jury could not reasonably conclude that this particular restructuring would have resulted in any expansion of Barkan's network of stores. In sum, Barkan failed to provide sufficient evidence of either link required to prove that Dunkin' Donuts' alleged breach caused damages. It follows that the lack of such causation proof also made the expert evidence as to damages irrelevant and potentially misleading; but, even had it been admitted, the outcome on the Rule 50 motion would have had to be the same.