Opinion ID: 195970
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lost Profits for 1992 and 1993

Text: 26 Next, Four Corners contends that it lost profits in 1992, and during the first quarter of 1993, when the gallonage caps under its wrongfully terminated Mobil franchise first began to exceed its actual Exxon gasoline sales or its potential Mobil gasoline sales. See supra note 2. For example, in 1992, Four Corners could have sold 112,139 more gallons (viz., the difference between its 1,097,545 gallon Mobil cap and its actual Exxon sales of 985,406 gallons) even assuming that Mobil refused to waive its cap. Thus, Four Corners claims, it was entitled to recover these discrete losses, which were proximately caused by Mobil's wrongful non-renewal under PMPA. 27 This claim can succeed only if the measure of compensatory damages under PMPA may exceed the level required to make the plaintiff-franchisee whole for whatever injury or loss flowed from the franchisor's wrongful conduct. But cf., e.g., Linn v. Andover Newton Theological Sch., 874 F.2d 1, 8 (1st Cir.1989) (noting that plaintiff failed to suggest that either the ADEA or contract law entitled him to be made more than whole). Four Corners points to no authority for this counterintuitive assumption, nor is there anything in PMPA's language or legislative history to suggest that Congress intended to deviate from the normal presumption, uniformly applied to numerous other causes of action arising under federal remedial statutes, that compensatory damages may not exceed the amount necessary to make the injured party whole. See, e.g., Midwest Petroleum Co. v. American Petrofina Mktg., Inc., 644 F.Supp. 1067, 1071 (E.D.Mo.1986) (noting PMPA franchisee is not entitled to double recovery where it has otherwise mitigated harmful effects of defendant's violation); see also Russo v. Texaco Inc., 630 F.Supp. 682, 687 (E.D.N.Y.) (PMPA is a diminution of franchisors' common-law contract rights, and its remedial provisions should not be unduly extended beyond statute's express language and purpose), aff'd, 808 F.2d 221 (2d Cir.1986). 28 Since Four Corners requested the district court to presume that its sixty-year-old Mobil franchise would have remained in force another ten years but for Mobil's wrongful nonrenewal, the court was required to determine the aggregate net profits Four Corners would lose during the entire ten-year period. The record evidence reveals that Four Corners actually realized an overall increase approximating $215,000, in total net profits and interest, as a consequence of having been freed from the Mobil gallonage caps during the five years immediately preceding trial. 4 Thus, the profits allegedly lost in 1992-93 clearly were not recoverable as discrete losses over and above the incidental profits gained during the entire five-year period.