James S. Lee & Co. v. United States

33 Cont. Cas. Fed. 74,192, 9 Cl. Ct. 322, 1986 U.S. Claims LEXIS 924
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedJanuary 3, 1986
DocketNo. 244-77
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 33 Cont. Cas. Fed. 74,192 (James S. Lee & Co. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
James S. Lee & Co. v. United States, 33 Cont. Cas. Fed. 74,192, 9 Cl. Ct. 322, 1986 U.S. Claims LEXIS 924 (cc 1986).

Opinion

OPINION

WIESE, Judge.

In an earlier decision entered in this case, this court determined that defendant, acting through the Vietnam Regional Exchange, a division of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, had breached its custom tailoring concession contract with plaintiff. Specifically, the decision held that defendant’s failure to terminate competing concessionaire operations at those military post exchanges where the volume of retail sales activity had fallen below the contract-specified support level was a breach of the contract’s “Deletion Clause”. This liability determination was affirmed on appeal and the case was remanded for a determination of the amount of damages “with the additional instruction that attention be given to the effect a notice period would have on the measure of damages.” James S. Lee & Co., Inc. (U.S.A.) v. United States, 703 F.2d 584 (1982) (per curiam; unpublished).

The present opinion addresses the measure of damages owing to plaintiff as a result of defendant’s breach. The facts are those stated in the decision on liability; such additional findings as are necessary to a resolution of the issue occur as part of the discussion or appear in the appendix that is included as part of the opinion.

Background

As background to the issues that arise here, we begin by quoting from the prior decision on liability:

[T]he record shows that, of the various outlets to which more than one tailoring outlet had initially been assigned, six [323]*323“three-contractor” outlets (out of a total of 17) experienced a permanent downturn in retail sales below the initially-premised $500,000 support level. The record also shows—but offers no explanation why—the Group C contractor was not deleted after it became apparent that the sales depression would be permanent. (We assume such a judgment could have been made, say, at the end of three consecutive months of diminished retail activity.) [James S. Lee & Co., Inc. (U.S.A.) v. United States, No. 244-77, slip op. at 29-30 (Ct.Cl. Feb. 16, 1982) (unpublished) (footnote omitted).]

The opinion goes on to note that the failure to delete the Group C contractor was a breach of the contract’s so-called “Deletion Clause”. As to the damages resulting from this breach, the court noted that the contractor (meaning plaintiff) was entitled to recover such profits as it might reasonably have expected to receive from its share of the tailoring sales that were wrongfully diverted because of the Exchange’s failure to delete the Group C contractor. To assist in this calculation, the opinion offered the following guidelines:

(i) the diverted or “lost” sales shall be the actual sales registered by the Group C contractor subsequent to three consecutive months of post exchange retail sales of less than $500,000; (ii) the contractor’s share of these diverted sales shall be determined on a month-by-month basis in accordance with the ratio existing between its own actual monthly sales and the actual monthly sales of the competing Group B contractor. Finally, for the sake of reference, we add in a footnote the outlets that appear from the record to define the scope of the recovery. [Id. at 31; footnote omitted.]

Notwithstanding this seemingly straightforward formula for the determination of damages, the parties have been unable to resolve the matter on their own. Virtually every step necessary to the calculation of the amount of plaintiff’s lost sales volume and the compensation due in consequence thereof is an issue in dispute.

Thus, the parties differ with regard to: (i) the triggering point for the operation of the Deletion Clause: when in point of time, should the Group C contractor have been deleted as a competing outlet—at the end of three months of diminished retail sales activity or some lesser (or greater) period?; (ii) the identification of those military post exchanges at which the Group C contractor should have been deleted in response to a fallback in post exchange retail sales volume to a level below $500,000 per month; (iii) the determination of the amount of tailoring sales wrongfully diverted to the Group C contractor because of the failure to terminate (i.e., delete); (iv) the calculation of plaintiff’s share of those sales; and, (v) the amount due plaintiff as compensation for unabsorbed overhead, under-absorbed material costs and profit on the reconstructed lost sales volume.

Of these various problems, only the last warrants discussion. The rest are matters for which the record offers no definite answers—they are, in truth, simply judgmental matters which the parties in a reasonable spirit of compromise and a more responsible concern for the use of judicial time could well have solved on their own. The discussion of these issues, being of no importance outside of this case, we leave to the appendix. All that needs to be said at this point is that from the discussion and information recited in the appendix, the court has concluded that plaintiff’s share of the lost tailoring sales comes to $89,553. With that as the intermediate point of analysis, the question then becomes what measure of damages is Lee due on account of this lost sales volume?

Discussion

In awarding damages for breach of contract, the guiding rationale is to place the injured party in as good a position as he would have been in had the contract been performed. Miller v. Robertson, 266 U.S. 243, 247, 45 S.Ct. 73, 74, 69 L.Ed. 265 (1924). An award that is guided by this rationale, that is, where the aim is to secure to a party the benefit of the bargain, [324]*324is more typically referred to as the protection of a promisee’s “expectation interest”. Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 344(a) (1981).

Traditionally, the standard measure of damages for such cases has been the difference between the contract price and the market value of the repudiated goods. United States v. Burton Coal Co., 273 U.S. 337, 340, 47 S.Ct. 351, 352, 71 L.Ed. 670 (1927). However, in cases such as this where the concept of a resale market does not fit, the alternative measure of damages “is the profit (including reasonable overhead) which the seller would have made from full performance by the buyer * * *.” U.C.C. § 2-708(2) (1976). This compensation formula does not assure to a party the profits that he hoped to make when the contract was awarded; rather, its aim is to duplicate the actual values that would have been realized by the injured party had his performance been permitted to go forward. In other words, “[rjecovery can be had only for loss that would not have occurred but for the breach.” Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 347 comment e (1981).

It is with this last thought in mind that we turn to the specifics of this case. In the preparation of its bid, Lee assumed, despite words of caution to the contrary in the bid documents, that the outlet-by-outlet estimates of tailoring sales listed in the solicitation would prove to be substantially accurate over the contract term; hence it took these figures to be essentially synonymous with the actual sales that it might expect to generate in the course of performance.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Jackson v. United States
12 Cl. Ct. 363 (Court of Claims, 1987)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
33 Cont. Cas. Fed. 74,192, 9 Cl. Ct. 322, 1986 U.S. Claims LEXIS 924, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/james-s-lee-co-v-united-states-cc-1986.