Court Opinion

ID: 9704757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:45:23.483748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:05.077470
License: Public Domain

*495Nolan, J.
(dissenting). Today, the majority takes an unorthodox approach in reviewing a judgment; after considering the record, it determines that the trial judge’s findings are unwarranted, and it then finds facts on its own to support an outcome which, in its judgment, is warranted. This is inappropriate. I comment briefly on several aspects of the majority opinion.
1. Trial judge’s award of damages. I acknowledge that prospective profits “cannot be recovered when they are remote, speculative, hypothetical, and not within the realm of reasonable certainty.” Lowrie v. Castle, 225 Mass. 37, 51 (1916). However, the trial judge’s ultimate findings cannot be deemed speculative or hypothetical, as they are supported sufficiently by subsidiary findings, each of which stands without error. In the circumstances, the plaintiffs reasonably could not have been expected to prove damages to the penny. This should not preclude a full recovery: “[Prospective profits] need not be susceptible of calculation with mathematical exactness, provided there is a sufficient foundation for a rational conclusion.” Id. The record supports the trial judge’s subsidiary findings, and these findings constitute a “sufficient foundation” for his ultimate findings and judgment.
I see no clear error in the judge’s finding that Isotronics’s sales would have grown at a rate of 20 %. Indeed, the majority, while contending that the figure is without support in the record, acknowledges that such an estimate was made at trial. It refuses to accept the estimate because it was prof: fered by an employee of Augat. This fact, however, goes only to the weight of the evidence, and does not warrant a ruling of error. In fact, contrary to the majority’s implicit assertion, Greenspan himself had estimated Isotronics’s sales growth to be greater than 20 %. There was evidence in the record sufficient to support the finding.
I agree with the majority that the trial judge’s calculation of Isotronics’s loss in value was not justified. However, the judge did not rely on the figure in calculating damages (except to check that the actual damages award was not excessive), and thus, it should not be of concern.
*496With respect to the period of two and one-quarter years for measurement of damages, I disagree with the majority’s determination that “the judge concluded that a competent replacement had to be, in effect, a clone of a departed employee,” ante at 492 n.6. The judge’s ultimate finding is consistent with his preliminary findings regarding the complex hybrid microcircuit packaging industry, Isotronics’s former position in that industry, and the positions and experience of the three departed employees.
2. Majority’s award of damages. The majority states early in its opinion that “[djamages for lost profits are recoverable only when proof is made ‘with sufficient certainty.’ ” It goes on to set forth how, in its judgment, the trial judge’s award of damages was not supported to a sufficient certainty by his subsidiary findings and the record. The majority then finds facts on its own, contradicting those found by the trial judge, and attempts to justify doing so by stating: “ [Although proof of the precise amount of loss is impossible, the defendants should not be permitted to escape the consequences of their wrongful conduct that caused harm to the plaintiffs. . . . The defendants should pay something . . . .” This is ironic; the majority contradicts its initial stance that damages must be proven to a sufficient certainty. If the majority examined its own award of damages with the same standard it used to examine that of the trial judge, without a doubt it would be unable to conclude that it should stand.
The majority’s cut-off date of June 30, 1985, is arbitrary. That date contradicts the trial judge’s numerous preliminary findings which support his ultimate finding that causation ended at or about April 1, 1987. The majority offers no support for the date, either from the trial judge’s findings of fact or from the record. Similarly, the “assumed” sales growth figure used by the majority, as well as its profit margin figure, also contradict the trial judge’s findings of fact, and again the majority offers no support for them. Indeed, the “assumed” sales growth figure is pulled out of thin air.
If the court finds error in the trial judge’s findings of fact, or if it determines that a conclusion or ultimate finding of the *497trial judge is not supported by the preliminary findings, it should so state. If it is able to reach alternative ultimate findings based on the trial judge’s preliminary findings, it rightly may do so. See Simon v. Weymouth Agric & Indus. Soc’y, 389 Mass. 146, 148 (1983) (“[inferences from the basic facts . . . are open for our decision . . . .” [emphasis added]). It may not, however, ignore both the record and the trial judge’s findings of fact by baldly “assuming” facts on its own to reach an alternative conclusion which it feels is appropriate.
Damages must be — and were, without error — measured in accordance with the facts as found by the appropriate fact-finding body, not by this court.