Opinion ID: 1897110
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: employee costs

Text: Dutton also claims that the trial court erred in not allowing Dutton to recover employee costs of $1,031,836.99 for time spent on the investigation and remediation of contamination. The court determined that Dutton did not provide sufficient evidence of its employee costs and that the evidence provided was obtained by guess and conjecture. Dutton provided only a general estimate of employee costs based on the percentage of time certain employees worked on the EPA matter. While damages need not be proved with mathematical certainty, neither can they be established by evidence which is speculative and conjectural. Aon Consulting v. Midlands Fin. Benefits, 275 Neb. 642, 748 N.W.2d 626 (2008). Dutton claims it should recover portions of its employees' time spent responding to the EPA requests and working on the pollution remediation. As to the sufficiency of the evidence, we review the trial court's findings of fact for clear error. See Albert v. Heritage Admin. Servs., 277 Neb. 404, 763 N.W.2d 373 (2009). We conclude the court was not clearly wrong in denying the employee costs. Dutton offered an exhibit prepared by Dutton's vice president and chief financial officer. He interviewed employees about the amount of time they recalled spending on EPA issues, but he was not able to obtain specific information for each year. He then retrieved salary information for the employees and multiplied salaries by the time they reported spending on EPA matters. One of the employees had died in 1998, and other employees had left employment with Dutton by the time the information was gathered. There were no timesheets or other hourly reports on which to rely. The evidence of employee costs was, as the trial court found, based on speculation and conjecture, and the court did not err in refusing to award employee costs to Dutton.