Alvarez v. All Star Boxing, Inc.

258 So. 3d 508
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedSeptember 12, 2018
DocketNo. 3D17-925
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 258 So. 3d 508 (Alvarez v. All Star Boxing, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alvarez v. All Star Boxing, Inc., 258 So. 3d 508 (Fla. Ct. App. 2018).

Opinion

LOGUE, J.

Saul Alvarez appeals a final judgment awarding All Star, Inc. $8.5 million for unjust enrichment following a 14-day jury trial. Alvarez argues that the amount of the damages was not based on competent substantial evidence. We agree, reverse, and remand with instructions.

BACKGROUND

By all accounts, the red-haired, twenty-eight-year-old Saul Alvarez, nicknamed "Canelo," is a rising international star in welterweight and middleweight boxing. As Alvarez himself testified, his 2013 fight against Floyd Mayweather was the second-highest grossing fight in boxing history at the time. Alvarez began his professional boxing career in Mexico at age 15. At an early and formative point in his career, Alvarez received boxing promotional services from All Star Boxing. All Star Boxing provided these services to Alvarez for a 15-month period that ran from September 2008 to December 2009 when Alvarez was approximately 18 years old.

The driving force behind All Star was Feliz Zabala Jr. Zabala has previously been named Latino Promoter of the Year by the World Boxing Organization. Zabala's father was a boxing promoter and Zabala was raised in the boxing industry. By eighteen, Zabala was a trainer and manager. In 2001, Zabala devoted himself full-time to being a promoter. He has promoted approximately 100 fighters-12 have become world champions.

Among other services during the 15 months, All Star obtained nine fights for Alvarez that prepared him for boxing stardom - seven fights in Mexico and two fights in the United States. Some of the fights were broadcast by Telefura Univision network. All Star also obtained a visa for Alvarez to travel to the United States *510for the fights. It garnered publicity in boxing publications and televised events. It paid for some of Alvarez's expenses including athletic shoes, equipment, air fare, and referee fees. Any money that it might have been entitled to for its work as promoter, it let Alvarez keep. Zabala personally attended some, but not all, fights. All Star viewed Alvarez as an investment. It assumed that if Alvarez reached the top, All Star would then obtain a fair return on investment by sharing the earnings generated by Alvarez's fights. By the end of 2009, All Star believed its effort had brought Alvarez to the verge of stardom.

All Star's expectations came to naught, however, when on January 21, 2010, Alvarez signed an exclusive promotional agreement with a different promoter, Golden Boy Productions, Inc. Golden Boy was an international, top-tier promoter with a track record of organizing fights on Pay-Per-View, HBO, Showtime, ESPN, and Fox, and at such venues as Madison Square Garden in New York and the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Golden Boy paid Alvarez a $1 million signing bonus.

The disappointed All Star sued Golden Boy for tortious interference and Alvarez for breach of contract and unjust enrichment. The jury rejected All Star's claims for tortious interference against Golden Boy and for breach of contract against Alvarez. But it found that Alvarez was unjustly enriched by All Star's services and awarded $8.5 million in damages. The amount of this unjust enrichment award is the only matter on appeal.

At trial, as reflected in the jury instruction, both parties agreed that the damages for unjust enrichment are "either the reasonable value of the labor [All Star] performed and the expenses [All Star] incurred if such labor or expenses conferred a benefit on Mr. Alvarez, or the value of the benefits that Mr. Alvarez received from All Star's labor or expenses."

All Star did not present evidence of a specific dollar figure to reflect the amount of its unjust enrichment damages. Instead, All Star's theory was apparently that the damages for unjust enrichment should be an unspecified percentage of Alvarez's subsequent earnings for all or part of his lifetime.

In this regard, All Star relied upon the testimony of its financial expert, Carl Fedde, a certified public accountant. Fedde's actual assignment was to calculate All Star's lost profits due to the breach of contract claim. He assumed All Star would have made the same as Golden Boy (Alvarez's new promoter), who in turn, would have made the same as Alvarez. Fedde first estimated that Alvarez earned $27 million from boxing in the period from 2010 to 2015 (a number he reduced to $24 million when shown an error in his calculations on cross-examination).

His estimate of $24 million from boxing in the period from 2010 to 2015 was based on his research of the 16 bouts Alvarez fought during this time. Fedde was unable to obtain verified accounting information regarding the revenues and expenses from these fights. He relied on information from sports and boxing newspapers republished on the internet. From these sources, for each of the 16 fights, he separately estimated revenues from the gate, international TV, sponsors, closed circuit TV, other TV, and pay-per-view. He then estimated how the money was distributed to other promoters and pay-per-view providers. Fedde was unable to obtain actual information for line item expenses such as payments to undercard fighters at the fights, insurance, travel, lodging, legal fees, etc. Because of this, as All Star explained in its brief, he instead used a "conservative 50% catch-all category of expense (to cover unknown *511items)." He then also assumed Alvarez shared proceeds 50/50 with his own promoter, an assumption discussed in more detail below.

After estimating Alvarez's earnings from 2010 to 2015, Fedde next projected Alvarez would earn $135 million from 2016 to 2026. He did so by taking his estimates of the revenue from Alvarez's last five fights during the period of 2010 to 2015 and building similar income and expense projections for each of 21 different hypothetical future fights over the next 10 years. Among other things, he assumed Alvarez would not be injured or disqualified; Alvarez would fight two fights a year; Alvarez would be the star attraction of each fight; revenues would increase as Alvarez's reputation grew; and Fedde's own estimates and assumptions for the period 2010 to 2015 would similarly apply during the period 2016 to 2026, including the generic rate of 50% for expenses and the 50/50 split between boxer and promoter.

Fedde thereby projected that gross revenues from Alvarez's future fights from 2016 to 2026 would reach 1.9 billion dollars. From this amount Alvarez's net profits would be $219,969,428, which Fedde reduced to a present value of $135,042,147 using a five-percent discount rate.

A crucial part of Fedde's calculation concerned how Alvarez and his promoter shared their portion of the take. Some fighters receive zero percent while others receive eighty percent or more. Fedde settled on an estimate of a 50/50 split for both his estimates of past earnings (2010 to 2015) and projection of future earnings (2016 to 2026).

During cross-examination, Fedde struggled to explain how he reached the figure of 50 percent. Fedde initially offered explanations such as "I felt a 50/50 split would be the easiest way"; "[t]he reality was ... that percentage could be between a hundred percent and zero percent and I took the average"; and "I picked 50 percent which is right in the middle." Fedde finally admitted that he selected 50 percent because he simply lacked the information "that would give me a reasonable basis to say whether or not 50 percent is reasonable or not":

Q. Did you have such information?

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Bluebook (online)
258 So. 3d 508, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alvarez-v-all-star-boxing-inc-fladistctapp-2018.