Opinion ID: 204121
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Missing Evidence of Specific Lost Sales

Text: VSI presented no evidence of any specific lost sales resulting from MPT's statements. It argues that circumstantial evidence of specific lost customers was presented to the jury, however, through MPT's witnesses, who testified about meeting with a number of identified customers and persuading some of them to change their accounts from VSI to MPT. None of this specific evidence links MPT's statements to VSI's loss of any customers. VSI cites the testimony of MPT's marketing director, Peter Stevens, that MPT regained business from a hospital in Virginia (Crailion) that had been using the D-Stat Dry after he met with a cardiologist there. Stevens' testimony, however, focused on his efforts to persuade the doctor that the SyvekPatch had a clinical basis. Indeed, VSI presumably could have inquired of the same cardiologist and his colleagues at Crailion about their exposure to the statements in the marketing bulletin. VSI also points to MPT's damages chart, claiming that it shows multiple customers that MPT lost and then regained, presumably after its sales force or top executives spread `the message.' [11] Although the record might support an inference that, along with touting the SyvekPatch's scientific value, Stevens communicated false statements about the risks associated with the D-Stat Dry, the chart is not equivalent to evidence showing that a particular customer was swayed by one or more of the five challenged statements. It does not contain examples of customers whose rejection of the D-Stat Dry is explicitly linked to MPT's disparagement or even circumstantially attributable to the statements. The chart contains no information indicating why the listed customers switched from one company to the other, and then back again. It is this kind of customer-specific evidence, describing how the disparaging statements at issue affected them, that would support a finding that many other customers were similarly affected. Without this customer-specific evidence, a jury finding that the customers reacquired by MPT returned as a result of the challenged statements, rather than for some other reasonperhaps that the D-Stat Dry did not meet their expectations would rely on the same kind of speculative inference that must be rejected as insufficient to prove lost profits where evidence concerning specific lost sales is reasonably obtainable. Notably, Stevens described a number of specific instances in 2004 in which he was unable to persuade lab representatives with whom he met to continue or resume using the SyvekPatch. He testified to visiting well over 100 cath labs in 2004, seeking to discover the reason for MPT's sales losses and to convert customers back to the SyvekPatch. On cross-examination, he confirmed that, in the majority of cases, MPT lost the accounts despite his efforts-evidence that weakens the inference that statements from MPT executives were persuading customers to reject or abandon the D-Stat Dry as too risky. [12] The record thus contains no evidence linking MPT's statements to particular behavior by VSI customers. Indeed, in deposition testimony, VSI's former vice president for sales, Michael Nagel, stated that he was not aware of the loss of any customers or sales on account of MPT's statements. Although VSI asserts that its CEO, Howard Root, rather than Nagel, would have received reports of lost accounts that appeared to result from product disparagement, Root also provided no specific examples. VSI apparently did not lose the only customer who is known to have received a copy of the marketing bulletin containing the five statements. In responding to interrogatories, VSI named nine hospitals where it claimed to have lost sales because of MPT's sales tactics. That information was not introduced at trial. The absence of evidence concerning specific customers is particularly troubling given that VSI's generalized evidence of damages was unimpressivea weakness that has prompted the majority's remittitur approach and the proposal of a reduced award.