Court Opinion

ID: 9746294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:11:22.568926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:11.551900
License: Public Domain

DANA, Justice,
with whom WATHEN, Chief Justice, joins, dissenting.
[¶ 12] I respectfully dissent. Although we have never held that a contract for employment is subject to the good faith requirement of commercially reasonable conduct, the court’s instruction on this point was harmless in two respects.
[¶ 13] First, it is inconceivable that the jury could have found CMMS and Lynch liable for fraud and a breach of a duty of good faith, but not liable for a simple breach of the underlying oral employment contract. The gravamen of Niedojadlo’s complaint was that Lynch and, in effect, CMMS intentionally altered Niedojadlo’s account records in order to prevent Niedojadlo from being fully compensated for work that he had completed for the company. This act of deception, which necessarily formed the basis of the jury’s finding on the fraud count, also compels the jury’s implied finding that CMMS breached what must be an essential element of the parties’ contract, namely, that CMMS would pay Niedojadlo for the work he performed.
[¶ 14] Furthermore, the jury’s finding that Lynch and CMMS perpetrated a fraud on Niedojadlo is fully supported by the evidence and provides an independent rational basis for the damage award. “A damage award will be disturbed only when it is plain that there is no rational basis upon which the amount of the award may be supported. A rational basis exists if there is any competent evidence in the record to support it.” James v. MacDonald, 1998 ME 148, ¶ 11, 712 A.2d 1054 (quotation omitted). Based on the record, the jury rationally could have found that Niedojadlo reasonably relied on CMMS to accurately record the compensation to which *938he was entitled, and that the company’s intentional alteration of the books caused Nie-dojadlo to suffer damages in the amount of the alteration.
[¶ 15] I would affirm the judgment entered in the Superior Court.