Damages

Court errs in awarding lost profits based on insufficient evidence and speculative assumptions that project would have been built according to plans. Greenwich S.F., LLC v. Donna Wong, (No. A123670 & A124882 California Courts of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Two, December 2, 2010).

Loss profits may be awarded as consequential damages and must be plead with particularity and proven to be certain, both as to their occurrence and their extent.  In this case, lost profits were not proven with reasonable certainty.  The evidence was insufficient to prove that the plaintiff had an established business of successfully developing or redeveloping projects.  The Plaintiff expert’s claims were based on the assumption that the plaintiff would have constructed a project according to plans.  However, these assumptions were inherently uncertain and highly speculative.  Therefore, the court erred in awarding lost profits to the plaintiffs.

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