holding plaintiffs claim for intentional interference with prospective business relations should not have been submitted to the jury because substantial evidence did not exist to show defendant acted with a predominately improper purpose; the court concluded: “Substantial evidence of a connection between [defendant’s] refusing further long-term credit and [a later transaction] does not appear. Any relationship is simply too attenuated. This tort basis of liability should not have been submitted for jury consideration.”
How later courts described this case
- holding plaintiffs claim for intentional interference with prospective business relations should not have been submitted to the jury because substantial evidence did not exist to show defendant acted with a predominately improper purpose; the court concluded: “Substantial evidence of a connection between [defendant’s] refusing further long-term credit and [a later transaction] does not appear. Any relationship is simply too attenuated. This tort basis of liability should not have been submitted for jury consideration.”
- concluding that intentionally breaching a contract through an agent is “not condone[d]” but does not rise to the level of outrageousness required
- holding intentional tort action should not have been submitted to the jury where plaintiff merely “wasn’t as interested, or ... was downhearted more or less and depressed”
- insufficient evidence to submit claim to jury when the evidence of emotional distress included being bothered by creditors late in the evening, making enemies of friends by attempting to collect accounts receivable early, feeling degraded by entering bankruptcy, and the plaintiffs mother noted he “ “wasn’t as interested or he was downhearted more or less’ ” and “ ‘depressed’ ” about the decline in his business
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*802 CARTER, 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.