Posts Tagged 'Punitive Damages'

The California Court of Appeal has unanimously upheld the $6.2 million judgment that Conkle, Kremer & Engel won at trial for a sales representative who had been deprived of $2 million in commissions he had earned.

Peter Reilly was a retired electronics industry executive who agreed to use his extensive contacts in the industry to bring new business to a growing manufacturing company, Inquest Technology, Inc.  After Reilly was not paid commissions for the contacts that he brought to Inquest, he asked Conkle, Kremer & Engel for help.

Reilly v. Inquest – Plaintiff’s Trial and Appeal Team

CK&E’s Eric S. Engel and H. Kim Sim were the trial lawyers who devised the case strategy.  Key to the strategy was establishing by discovery and summary judgment motion the intricate requirements to impose liability against Inquest under a rarely-used law called the Independent Wholesale Sales Representatives Contractual Relations Act of 1990, California Civil Code section 1738.10 (“the Act”).  The main attraction of the Act is that jury awards for willful violations are trebled by the court and attorneys’ fees are awarded to a successful plaintiff.  Few laws in commercial litigation impose a penalty of three-times actual damages – that is a greater multiplier than most permissible punitive damages awards.

CK&E was able to prove that the sales representative relationship that Reilly had with Inquest met the particular requirements of the Act.  At trial, a unanimous jury found that Reilly procured sales for which he should have been paid $2,065,702 in commissions, based on the testimony of Reilly’s damages expert Thomas Neches.  The trial court then applied the Act’s penalty of treble damages to award Reilly a $6.2 million judgment, plus attorneys’ fees and interest, to enter the Judgment for Peter Reilly against Inquest Technology on Jury Verdict.

Of course, the Defendants appealed the judgment.  On July 31, 2013, the Reilly v. Inquest Technology case led to the first published decision of a California Court of Appeal to uphold a judgment trebling damages and awarding attorneys’ fees under the Act.  Anthony Kornarens was the appellate lawyer for Reilly, with assistance by CK&E.  In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeal determined that Reilly’s judgment of $6.2 million was well supported by the evidence presented at trial, and that Reilly’s claims for unpaid sales commissions were within the special protections of the Act.

Click here for the full copy of the California Court of Appeal decision:  Reilly v Inquest Court of Appeal Decision, Case No. G046291 (July 31, 2013)

Watch for our future posts about the Act, including how CK&E proved that Inquest’s owners were also liable for the full amount of the $6.2 million judgment even though they were not subject to the Act.