Blog : Damages

Checking in on our favorite non-compete fact pattern You might be wondering what happened to our friend Dawn Davis. Well, with the housing market booming, the window business is doing well. Dawn just had her best year of sales at Paula Payne Windows. But Dawn felt like she wasn’t getting a big enough cut of the profits. So she jumped ship and went to work for Real Cheap Windows. Trouble is, Dawn had a two-year non-compete with Payne, and Payne sued, asking for an injunction and damages. The judge denied the injunction, but the case is about to go to […]

In Motion Medical Technologies v. Thermotek, the Fifth Circuit reversed a jury’s award of over $1.5 million in fraud damages because the award was based on evidence of gross profits, not net profits.

Horizon v. Acadia finds expert’s assumptions too speculative to support lost profits verdict Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be damages experts in Texas. That’s the refrain CPAs may feel like singing after the Texas Supreme Court recently raised the bar for proving lost profits damages in trade secrets lawsuits—again. It started in 2016 with Southwest Energy v. Berry-Helfand, where the damages expert calculated lost profits for misappropriation of oilfield trade secrets by assuming a flat reasonable royalty rate of 3%, which was consistent with industry standards. As I reported here, the Texas Supreme Court said this opinion […]

Oral argument in Horizon Health v. Acadia Healthcare illustrates difficulties with proving lost profits damages when employment is at-will

What did the Beaumont Court of Appeals say recently about the right measure of lost profits damages in a “Fiduciary Duty Lite” case?

In Southwestern Energy the Texas Supreme Court addressed expert testimony on lost profits in an oil and gas trade secrets case.