Court Opinion

ID: 9527655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:32:19.902829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:02.012888
License: Public Domain

Grant, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I agree with the court’s statement that “[t]he evidence is such that the jury could find that Vande Mheen breached the covenant, at least until the last few months of the relevant period,” in that the evidence shows a flagrant and continuous violation of the covenant not to compete throughout the entire applicable period from the date of the signing of the contract up to the date of the filing of the petition *167herein.
As I view the record, the evidence shows that the fact of damage has been proven beyond doubt and that sufficient evidence was adduced by Quad-States to prove the amount of those damages to a degree sufficient to support the jury’s verdict. I agree fully with the statement in the majority opinion that the measure of damages in an action for the breach of a covenant not to compete is usually difficult of exact computation and in the final analysis is an estimate or approximation. As an example of the problems facing a plaintiff in this type of case, Quad-States did not have available the approach approved by this court in Gallagher v. Vogel, 157 Neb. 670, 61 N.W.2d 245 (1953). In the Gallagher case the plaintiff was able to adduce evidence of business operations during the time that no improper competition existed and during the time the defendant was improperly competing. In this case Quad-States could not introduce evidence of such a comparison because defendant competed improperly throughout the entire period.
I believe the jury could calculate Quad-States’ damages, however, without indulging in the “speculation and conjecture” condemned in Midlands Transp. Co. v. Apple Lines, Inc., 188 Neb. 435, 197 N.W.2d 646 (1972). Quad-States produced .evidence of specific instances where defendant had breached his contract with Quad-States by directly competing, and adduced testimony that Quad-States would have purchased 90 percent of the items that defendant had prevented Quad-States from purchasing and that such purchases would have resulted in a certain percentage of profit. This approach is not unlike the method approved in D. W. Trowbridge Ford, Inc. v. Galyen, 200 Neb. 103, 262 N.W.2d 442 (1978). Quad-States’ figures and theories were supported by expert testimony, and the jurors were properly instructed that they could believe such testimony or not, according to their own best judgment. The jury obviously chose to believe Quad-States’ evidence. If the jury believed such evidence, the jury had a basis to calculate damages.
The majority opinion relies, in part, on evidence adduced which showed, as stated in the majority opinion, that *168Quad-States “did very little traveling in search of available items” and that Quad-States “was not making many purchases from any source.” The latter testimony came from one of plaintiff’s employees who formerly had been an employee of defendant. The jury could properly choose not to believe such evidence or could have concluded that defendant had so acted as to make such activities on the part of Quad-States futile.
I would affirm the jury verdict.