Court Opinion

ID: 9884478
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:59:02.207883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:38.869869
License: Public Domain

DARDEN, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I fully concur with the majority's resolution of the latter two issues; however, I respectfully dissent with its conclusion that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in awarding H & G $20,000 as damages for Wenzel's breach of his fiduciary duty to H & G.
In Wengell II, the trial court found that
between March 27 and June 30, 1995, Wenzel secretly contacted numerous clients of [H & G] for whom Wensel was doing work, and solicited such clients to *1005leave [H & G] and to employ Wenzel's new firm, after his departure.
779 N.E.2d at 46. Thereafter, the trial court concluded that Wenzel "breached his fiduciary duties to [H & G] by actively soliciting clients to leave [H & G], and to transfer their files to him at his new firm, all while he was still a paid employee of [H & G]." Id. For Wenzel's "breaches of his fiduciary duties" to H & G, the trial court then awarded to H & G damages in the amount of $20,000. Id.
As the majority notes, we held to be erroneous "the trial court's determination that Wenzel had solicited numerous clients, in addition to NCB." Op. at 1002. We reached this conclusion because according to the evidence, Hopper and Galli-her had approved a certain format for communication by Wenzel with existing clients to inform them that he would be leaving H & G. Further, the evidence did not reflect any departure from that format in Wenzel's communication with seventeen of those clients contacted by Wenzel; only with NCB, the eighteenth client, did the evidence show that Wenzel's communication exceeded the approved format.
Therefore, we affirmed the trial court's "findings of fact and conclusions of law [as] to Wenzel's breach of duty by secretly soliciting NCB." 779 N.E.2d at 48. However, we held that the trial court's findings of fact and conclusions of law were "clearly erroneous to the extent they applied] to the alleged secret solicitation of other clients." Id. Thus, because we found the record to support only one instance of an inappropriate client solicitation rather than eighteen, we remanded "with instructions that the trial court adjust its damage award to an amount consistent with this opinion." Id. (emphasis added).
While we provided no specific guidance as to how the adjustment should be made, the trial court's award after remand reflects no adjustment whatsoever. Therefore, I would find that the trial court abused its discretion when it proceeded after remand to award damages in the same amount for the single breach.