Reach Companies, LLC v. Newsert, LLC, No. 22-3570 (8th Cir. 2024)
Annotate this CaseIn this breach-of-contract dispute, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the decision of the District Court of Minnesota, which rejected Reach Companies, LLC's appeal for a new trial after a jury awarded $1,196,364 in damages to Newsert, LLC and David Serata. Reach Companies, a distributor of hand sanitizers, alleged that Newsert, a wholesaler of the same products, continued accepting late shipments despite delays and price fluctuations. Newsert countered that Reach failed to fulfill all but one of its purchase orders, causing Newsert to lose two customers. The court found that the purchase orders were unambiguous with respect to their terms, rejecting Reach’s argument that the "must ship by" dates were simply aspirational. The court also held that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to prove Newsert's lost profits with reasonable certainty, dismissing Reach's argument that the losses were speculative and didn't account for overhead. Lastly, the court allowed the admission of evidence of prior criminal convictions of Reach’s Vice President for impeachment purposes, as the crimes involved fraud and deceit and were thus relevant to the issues in the case.
Court Description: [Shepherd, Author, with Benton and Kelly, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Contracts. Challenged instruction telling the jury to disregard the parties' pre-contract interactions was not erroneous because the district court did not err in determining the purchase orders at issue were not ambiguous as to their terms; the evidence was sufficient to support the jury's award of lost profits to defendant; the district court did not err in admitting evidence of six criminal convictions incurred by one of plaintiff's officers, as they were numerous, spanned a significant period of time, and all involved fraud and deceit; the information bore directly on the witness's credibility in this dispute which centered largely on whether the parties had agreed orally to terms that supplemented or changed the written purchase orders.
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