Opinion ID: 697651
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: General Damages Theory

Text: 269 The jurisprudence of tort damages illustrates myriad relationships between the wrongdoer and the injured party, from which there have evolved general criteria that apply damages law and policy. Precedent deals with the criteria of directness of the injury, foreseeability, and duty, derived from policy considerations whereby the public interest in remedying wrong is balanced with the public interest in placing reasonable limits on liability. Applying these rules, the ISOs were a direct and foreseeable victim of the infringement. Their recovery is not barred by statute or policy. Their entitlement is a question of fact and proof, applying the law and policy of damages. 270 Much of the evidence at trial, of head-to-head competitive bids against Kelley, was presented by the ISOs: 271 Each of plaintiffs' claim files contains several documents pertaining to a single transaction or series of transactions with a single customer. The files include deposition testimony from a member of a Rite-Hite sales organization regarding a sale that Rite-Hite claims to have lost on account of an infringing Kelley sale. ... According to plaintiffs' expert witness, accountant Ronald Beckman, every claim file regarding transactions in which plaintiffs seek lost profit damages contains testimony that: (1) prior to the Kelley sale, Rite-Hite salespersons had solicited the Kelley customer for Rite-Hite vehicle restraints, and (2) vehicle restraints from other manufacturers had not been bid or had been ruled out by the customer because of perceived product problems.... PDTX-143 specifically itemizes 169 cases in which plaintiffs' salespersons testified that they had initially convinced the customer to purchase a restraint before the customer ultimately purchased from Kelley. 272 Rite-Hite v. Kelley, 774 F.Supp. at 1525-26, 21 USPQ2d at 1809 (emphases added). The evidence was extensive and uncontradicted, that the injury to the ISO plaintiffs was directly and foreseeably caused by the infringement. The legal insulation of a wrongdoer from responsibility for its acts is rare in the law, requiring sound basis in public policy. In The New Property, 73 Yale L.J. 733 (1964), Professor Reich discusses the evolution of protection of property rights as characteristic of a just society. 273 The provision of adequate remedy for patent infringement is fundamental to a viable patent law. The district court's damages rulings are not in clear error, and I would sustain them.