Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What was the breach? Failure to publish a book. Is it clear that there
was a promise to publish the book? Publisher could cancel if it thought the
manuscript was unsuitable. Not much of a promise to publish [typical, by
the way of book contracts]. One catch: the publisher had to decide in 60
days whether to publish; if it did not cancel in 60 days, then it had to
publish the book. The publisher failed to decide against publication in 60
days, so there really is a breach here.
But the book is not published, so the question is: what is the best way
for him to mitigate his losses?
Mitigation in Freund
These are two theories: if the book had been self-published, then he would
get benefits but he would need to be given cost of completion.
If the book is not published, the professor doesn=t get the benefits,
but don't spend money on completion.
If the best way to mitigate is not to publish the book himself, then he
has: the advance, the promotion, but not the royalties and prestige.
Proof of damages
But what if court picks a figure of copies sold? Wouldn't that risk over-
compensating the plaintiff?
Two theories
Consider two theories about why the courts follow the reasonable certainty
rule for damages.
The lip service theory: the claim here is that the courts only pay lip service
to the expectation principle in damages; they really prefer a measure of
damages that makes a lower award.
The movement toward expectation theory: the theory here is that the cts
are really moving toward the expectation measure, and are starting to
modify the rules about how much evidence you need to prove damages.
The lip service theory
Atty's fees: The treatment of atty's fees is evidence for this theory.
Recall Neri v. Retail Marine; there was no award of atty's fees there; the
client has to pay, so isn't Retail Marine really under-compensated? They are
worse off than if K had been performed.
So, there are ways in which cts fall short of awarding full expectation
damages (atty's fees, pain and suffering, reasonable certainty requirement).
One possible explanation, of course, is that the cts do not really have the
goal of awarding expectation damages. This is the lip service theory.
The theory is that the cts are moving away from the doctrines that lead to
awarding less than the full expectation measure of damages.
Psychic losses: the law on recovering for psychic losses has changed:
they can be recovered--if the breach of the contract makes such a claim
plausible; Hawkins v. Magee, and the grandfather's casket example. But
you can't get emotional distress claims for ordinary breach of commercial
contract, building a house, etc. Idea: should not fly into emotional distress
here; rather, can mitigate by covering or reselling, avoids loss and
emotional distress; also, idea is that some emotional distress is just part of
doing business.
Reasonable certainty rule: we can let the jury place a value on the
emotional distress. So in grandfather case, you testify about how dear
grandfather was to you, how upset you are, etc.; defense puts on evidence
that you never cared for the "old geezer" --as you used to refer to him, as
they make you admit on cross-examination. We see the trend in the
movement away from the "new business rule". The rule was that lost
profits are not recoverable where the breach of contract prevents a P from
establishing a new business. New rule is that plaintiff can present evidence
of profitability and give issue to the jury.
Rambola v. Cosindas
We see the new approach in Rambola v. Cosindas --this is the horse race
case. court went by the track record (literally).
Answer: the professor did not introduce evidence about the possible
number of sales. He did not make any "track record" available.
Lost profits
Can one prove lost profits with reasonable certainty? Four cases to
distinguish:
(1): the old rule was that lost profits from a new business could not be
proven with reasonable certainty. The modern approach allows evidence of
lost profits to go to the jury.
(2): No special problems here; the lost profits are easy to caluculate.
(3) and (4): the courts are more reluctant to find proof with reasonable
certainty here. Some courts have held that loss of goodwill damages
cannot--as a matter of law--be proven with reasonable certainty.