Opinion ID: 2683355
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Grant of JMOL on Unjust Enrichment

Text: The Second Circuit reviews “a district court’s resolution of a motion for judgment as a matter of law” de novo and applies “the same standard as the district court itself was required to apply.” Diesel v. Town of Lewisboro, 232 F.3d 92, 103 (2d Cir. 2000) (citations omitted). In doing so, the Second Circuit will “consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party and give that party the benefit of all reasonable inferences from the evidence that the jury might have drawn in that party’s favor,” id. (citation omitted), but “cannot assess the weight of conflicting evidence, pass on the credibility of the witnesses, or substitute its judgment for that of the jury,” LeBlanc-Sternberg v. Fletcher, 67 F.3d 412, 429 (2d Cir. 1995) (citations omitted). Unjust enrichment requires “1) that the defendant benefited; 2) at the plaintiff’s expense; and 3) that equity and good conscience require restitution.” Kaye v. Grossman, 202 F.3d 611, 616 (2d Cir. 2000) (citation omitted). Below, the district court found that there was no evidence in the record to support the jury’s award of damag12 MEDISIM LTD. v. BESTMED, LLC es to Medisim for unjust enrichment. Medisim, 959 F. Supp. 2d at 425-26. It noted that “[t]o the extent that BestMed’s sales of the accused products occurred during the operation of the IDA and the PSA, any claim for unjust enrichment is waived by those contracts,” which Medisim conceded. Id. at 425 n.180. Therefore, the only issue that remains is whether Medisim is entitled to damages for unjust enrichment following the expiration of the IDA and PSA. Medisim argues that its unjust enrichment claim is based on the enrichment that BestMed obtained from selling thermometers developed through the unauthorized use of Medisim’s proprietary, non-public information, to Medisim’s detriment. Specifically, Medisim argues that it developed a successful water bath testing procedure, which was a prerequisite to selling thermometers in the United States. It claims that it was particularly difficult to develop a reliable procedure for devices that calculated approximations of core body temperatures rather than temperatures measured at the surface of the skin. BestMed responds that although Medisim now makes water bath testing the focus of its unjust enrichment case, that issue was only a small part of Medisim’s overall unfair competition case below, and Medisim never asked the jury to find unjust enrichment on that basis. Indeed, BestMed argues that the unjust enrichment claim “fell in the interstices” of Medisim’s other claims. See Medisim, 959 F. Supp. 2d at 417. We agree with BestMed. During trial, Medisim failed to present any evidence to support a finding that BestMed received an incremental benefit from Medisim’s allegedly proprietary water bath testing procedure over that compensable by the patent laws. It grouped together its patent and non-patent damages claims, relying on BestMed’s profits from all of the accused products. See Medisim, 959 F. Supp. 2d at 426 n.182. Medisim offered no MEDISIM LTD. v. BESTMED, LLC 13 evidence to show why BestMed had reason to think that Medisim’s procedures for water bath testing were confidential or otherwise proprietary. Thus, even when viewing all the evidence in the light most favorable to Medisim, we cannot conclude that equity and good conscience require restitution.