Opinion ID: 774360
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: 19 Deckers asserts that there is insufficient evidence to support the jury's damages findings. We disagree. 20 We must uphold the jury's finding of the amount of damages unless the amount is grossly excessive or monstrous, clearly not supported by the evidence, or based only on speculation or guesswork. Los Angeles Mem'l Coliseum Comm'n v. NFL, 791 F.2d 1356, 1360 (9th Cir. 1986). The jury awarded the two plaintiffs a combined $1,785,000. We need not decide whether a reasonable royalty was supported by the evidence in this case, because the record evidence of non-royalty damages alone -in the form of plaintiffs' lost profits and lost business opportunities -supports the jury's verdict. 21 First, plaintiffs' expert, Polzin, testified that plaintiffs suffered $8,062,099 in lost opportunities. Polzin came to this figure by calculating the royalties plaintiffs could have made by licensing their trade secrets to other footwear manufacturers. As a factual premise to justify this calculation, another of plaintiffs' witnesses, Ian Whatley (Whatley), testified that he had been employed by FILA to find new shoe technologies and, in that capacity, rejected plaintiffs' designs because Deckers was already using the same technologies in its products. 22 Plaintiffs also introduced evidence of profits lost when the deal with S&K was lost. Taking the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the record reflects that Strong undertook extensive negotiations with S&K and that a draft agreement had been proposed between the parties that would have guaranteed sales of a minimum of 40,000 boots in the first year. This was more than a merely conjectural deal. 23 Deckers contests this evidence by attempting to contradict or discredit plaintiffs' witnesses, especially Polzin. Deckers made the same arguments to the jury and failed to carry the day. Because there is substantial evidence in the record, we affirm the jury's compensatory damages awards.