Court Opinion

ID: 9712972
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:04:07.865542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:15.531047
License: Public Domain

*802CARTER, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the holding of the court in division II and division III of the majority opinion which dénies recovery on plaintiffs' tort theories. I dissent from that part of the opinion which upholds the jury’s award on plaintiffs’ breach of contract theory.
On the breach of contract theory, I find the evidence is insufficient to permit a jury to find that the failure to advance $10,000 in long-term financing was the cause of plaintiffs’ business failure. The majority considers the issues of causation and damages on the breach of contract theory as a single issue. It accepts the testimony of plaintiffs’ expert witness as supporting the jury’s verdict with respect to both causation and damage. This witness was shown to be qualified as an expert with respect to the profit potential of plaintiffs’ business, had that business succeeded. To this extent, his views as to what plaintiffs’ profits would have been, had their business succeeded, are not speculative. I find nothing in the record, however, to suggest that his views that the lack of $10,000 in long-term financing made the difference in the success or failure of the business are other than pure speculation. The jury was offered no credible theory based on evidence in the case as to why it was more likely than not that the lack of those funds caused the business to fail.
The trial court erred in permitting the jury to consider lost profits as an element of damages. I would reverse the judgment of the trial court on the contract aspects of the litigation as well as on the tort aspects of the litigation.