Court Opinion

ID: 9367631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-01 16:00:30.606708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:01.727775
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-10235    Document: 57-1     Date Filed: 02/01/2023   Page: 1 of 4

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                         For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-10235
                          ____________________

       JUST PLAY, LLC,
                                                      Plaintiff-Counter
                                                   Defendant-Appellee,
       versus
       FITZMARK, INC.,

                                                    Defendant-Counter
                                                    Claimant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Florida
                    D.C. Docket No. 9:20-cv-80663-AMC
USCA11 Case: 22-10235      Document: 57-1      Date Filed: 02/01/2023     Page: 2 of 4

       2                       Opinion of the Court                 22-10235

                            ____________________

       Before WILSON, JORDAN, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
               FitzMark, Inc., a company which provides warehousing ser-
       vices, appeals from a $3.9 million jury verdict in favor of Just Play,
       LLC, on a claim of promissory estoppel. FitzMark argues that the
       district court erred (1) in denying its Rule 50 motion for judgment
       as a matter of law and (2) in instructing the jury on promissory es-
       toppel and in formulating the verdict form. Following oral argu-
       ment and a review of the record, we affirm.
               We review the district court’s denial of FitzMark’s Rule 50
       motion de novo, understanding that such a motion should be
       granted “only when the plaintiff presents no legally sufficient evi-
       dentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for [it] on a material el-
       ement of [its] cause of action.” St. Louis Condo. Ass’n, Inc. v. Rock-
       hill Ins. Co., 5 F.4th 1235, 1242 (11th Cir. 2021) (citation and inter-
       nal quotation marks omitted). Applying the elements of promis-
       sory estoppel under Florida law as set forth in W.R. Grace & Co.
       v. Geodata Servs., Inc., 547 So.2d 919, 924 (Fla. 1989), we conclude
       that the jury had before it sufficient evidence to render a verdict in
       favor of Just Play. There was evidence that FitzMark made prom-
       ises about the warehousing services that it would provide, that Just
       Play relied on those promises to its detriment, that FitzMark did
       not deliver on its promises, and that injustice could be avoided only
       through enforcement of those promises. Insofar as FitzMark
USCA11 Case: 22-10235       Document: 57-1      Date Filed: 02/01/2023      Page: 3 of 4

       22-10235                Opinion of the Court                           3

       argues that the jury could only have found that the relationship be-
       tween the parties was governed by the May 2, 2018 Rate Quotation
       and Contract it provided to Just Play, we agree with the district
       court that the conflicting evidence created a jury question on the
       existence of an oral or written contract, see D.E. 209 at 2–3, and
       that, in light of the evidence presented at trial, a jury could have
       reasonably found that the parties did not enter into a written agree-
       ment. See D.E. 248 at 4–5.
               Turning to the jury instruction, we see no abuse of discre-
       tion. “A district court has broad discretion in formulating jury in-
       structions,” Christopher v. Cutter Labs., Inc., 53 F.3d 1184, 1190
       (11th Cir. 1995), and FitzMark has not provided us with any author-
       ities that require a jury instruction on promissory estoppel under
       Florida law to set out the alleged promises verbatim. The main
       case that FitzMark relies on, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Prentice,
       290 So.3d 963, 965–66 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019), approved, 338 So.3d 831
       (Fla. 2022)—which involved a concealment conspiracy—is distin-
       guishable because it involved a jury instruction that did not tell the
       jury that it had to find that the plaintiff relied on any specific state-
       ments. Even the jury instruction proposed by the defendant in
       Prentice (which the First District determined was a correct state-
       ment of the law and should have been given) did not set out the
       alleged statements in detail. See Prentice, 290 So.3d at 965. For
       essentially the same reason, the district court did not err in submit-
       ting to the jury a verdict form that did not list the alleged promises
       in detail.
USCA11 Case: 22-10235   Document: 57-1   Date Filed: 02/01/2023   Page: 4 of 4

       4                   Opinion of the Court             22-10235

             AFFIRMED.