Court Opinion

ID: 9713239
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:11:39.397507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:17.700376
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE HEIPLE, concurring in part and dissenting in part: The plaintiff, d/b/a Select-A-Video, brought suit against its former employee, the defendant, Rhonda Welk. On the same day the defendant was fired from her job, she had placed eight video tapes in her car. Notified of her termination at the end of the day, she left the store and drove home with the tapes in her car. Two months later, she returned them. The trial court found that the plaintiff was entitled to $549, which was the amount the defendant would have owed if she had rented the tapes for the two months she kept them. Once the defendant’s employment had been terminated, she had no greater right to take tapes home than a mere customer. That is to say, at that point in time she should either have taken the tapes from her car and returned them to the store or else rented them. Instead, she took them with her without right. At that moment, she unlawfully converted the tapes to her own use. The voluntary return of the tapes two months later does not undo that unlawful conversion. The trial court found an implied contract had arisen which entitled the store to an award of $549 for lost rentals. While the majority order affirms the principle of implied contract, it reduces the damages to $9 on the grounds that there was not evidence that the defendant viewed the tapes more than once or that the plaintiff actually suffered a loss from lost rentals. I respectfully disagree with that portion of the order. The evidence showed a daily rental rate of $1 for the six children’s tapes that were taken plus $1.50 a day for each of the two adult tapes. Hence, the majority arrived at a reduced figure of $9, which assumes a single viewing of each of the eight tapes during the course of one day’s rental. The error here is that the question of whether the tapes were viewed or not and how many times they were viewed is wholly irrelevant. The fact is that the tapes were unlawfully in the possession of the defendant and available for viewing for a period of two months whether viewed in fact or not. Likewise, the plaintiff was deprived of the tapes for two months and thereby the possibility of renting them for that period of time. The benefit conferred on the defendant is the possession of the tapes for two months. Whether she viewed them once, not at all, or used them to prop up a short leg on her dining room table is really quite beside the point. She took them, kept them, had them in her possession for such use as she chose to make of them and, in fact, deprived the lawful owner of their use and potential rental for a period of two months. Therein lies the benefit and the detriment. Although the majority gives lip service to the principle that a court of review should not set aside the determination of damages unless it is contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence, it then takes itself outside the evidence to speculate on what the evidence did not show. That is to say, the number of times that the tapes were viewed and the number of times that the rental store did not rent the tapes. It is well settled that in order to recover lost profits, it is not necessary that the amount of loss be proven "with exact certainty. (Midland Hotel Corp. v. Reuben H. Donnelley Corp. (1987), 118 Ill. 2d 306.) Rather, given the prospective nature of such profits, recovery for lost profits may be had when there are any criteria by which probable profits can be estimated with reasonable certainty. (Barnett v. Caldwell Furniture Co. (1917), 277 Ill. 286.) Basing the damage award on the rental value of the tapes for the two months the defendant kept them was reasonable. Consequently, the trial court award of $549 was not against the manifest weight of the evidence. Accordingly, I dissent with respect to the reduction in the amount of the damage award.