Opinion ID: 4522406
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Estate’s Appeal

Text: The estate asserts that the district court committed four errors. First, it argues that the district court impermissibly “halved” its recovery by holding Bitters and Henry jointly and severally liable for the jury’s award of $356,619.30 in damages. We disagree. The district court found that it was “beyond debate” that the only damages awarded by the jury were for the non-payment of the note. Nebraska law provides that “a party may not have double recovery for a single injury or be made more than whole by compensation which exceeds the actual damages sustained.” See Tolliver v. Visiting Nurse Ass’n of Midlands, 771 N.W.2d 908, 916 (Neb. 2009). The district court had “a duty to make the . . . damages award conform to the law,” Corpus v. Bennett, 430 F.3d 912, 916 (8th Cir. 2005), and did not abuse its discretion by preventing the estate from recovering twice for a single, indivisible injury, see -9- Genetti, 621 N.W.2d at 546 (“Where several claims are asserted against several parties for redress of the same injury, only one satisfaction can be had.”). Second, the estate argues that the district court erred by not instructing the jury on pain-and-suffering damages. There was testimony at trial that Petersen was anxious, nervous, agitated, and worried about the non-payment of the loan. But the district court decided that, in the absence of more concrete testimony about the cause and extent of these damages, and because Petersen also suffered from other medical issues, there was “insufficient evidence” to submit this issue to the jury. Under Nebraska law, “a plaintiff’s evidence of damages may not be speculative or conjectural and must provide a reasonably certain basis for calculating damages.” Pribil v. Koinzan, 665 N.W.2d 567, 572 (Neb. 2003). We agree with the district court’s conclusion that the evidence was insufficient to provide the jury with a reasonably certain basis for calculating pain-and-suffering damages. Third, the estate challenges the district court’s decision, at the Rule 50 hearing, to dismiss its negligence claim as “duplicative” of its breach-of-fiduciary duty claim. In dismissing this claim, the district court correctly stated that, under Nebraska law, the elements of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty are the same—duty, breach, causation, and damages. McFadden Ranch, Inc. v. McFadden, 807 N.W.2d 785, 789 (Neb. Ct. App. 2011). The estate argues that this does not necessarily mean that the claims are duplicative because “[a] fiduciary duty arises out of a confidential relationship,” whereas negligence can occur in the absence of such a relationship. See Gonzalez v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., 803 N.W.2d 424, 446 (Neb. 2011). We agree that these claims are not always redundant. But here, the estate asserted the same duty, breach, causation, and damages as to each claim. Because it was clear at the Rule 50 hearing that these claims were identical, the district court did not err by dismissing the estate’s negligence claim. See Renner v. Wurdeman, 434 N.W.2d 536, 542 (Neb. 1989) (affirming the dismissal of a redundant claim). -10- Finally, the estate challenges the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Robert Boland. The estate’s claims against Boland were based on its assertion that Boland entered into a partnership with Bitters and was “jointly and severally liable for Bitters’s misconduct.” It provided evidence that Boland had a profile on Bitters’s website, that the two had “collaborated on speaking engagements, made referrals, and exchanged financial and legal ideas over the years,” and that the two wrote articles together and sometimes referred work to each other. The district court concluded that this failed to raise a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Bitters and Boland had entered into a partnership because there was “no evidence of co-ownership.” See Neb. Rev. Stat. § 67-410(1) (“[T]he association of two or more persons to carry on as co-owners a business for profit forms a partnership . . . .”); In re KeyTronics, 744 N.W.2d 425, 441 (Neb. 2008) (“It is co-ownership that distinguishes partnerships from other commercial relationships . . . .”). We agree with the district court’s analysis. See In re KeyTronics, 744 N.W.2d at 441 (listing several “objective indicia of co-ownership” that are not present here).