On Monday, Judge Noreika issued a post-trial ruling in Agrofresh v. Essentiv LLC, C.A. No. 16-662, modifying the jury's liability verdict and its damages award. She also criticized a briefing practice that she called "unhelpful and largely ineffective."
In the substantial post-trial opinion, Judge Noreika pieced through the jury verdict, which included findings of liability on state and federal trade secret grounds, unfair competition, intentional interference with contracts, conversion, civil conspiracy, and patent infringement.
Of particular note, although Judge Noreika rejected the jury verdict of patent infringement (based on an ensnarement non-infringement defense) and trade secret misappropriation as to one trade secret (because the plaintiff had not proved the existence of that trade secret), she let the compensatory damages verdict of $6 million stand because it was based on "alternative theories of liability with any one sufficient to sustain the damages award." For the same reason, the $1 million+ verdict for unjust enrichment arising from trade secret misappropriation was left alone.
However, the $24 million punitive damages award imposed by the jury based on defendants' liability for unfair competition, tortious interference, conversion and civil conspiracy was reduced to $6 million, because the larger amount was "unconstitutionally excessive and violates Defendants’ due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment." Although the Court found that "Defendants engaged in some trickery and deceitful practices . . . and those practices caused harm to Plaintiff. . . . that harm to Plaintiff was an economic harm to a financially secure company, and Defendants ceased their conduct once a court issued a ruling that determined certain rights held by Plaintiff."
More than once in the opinion, Judge Noreika chided the parties for incorporating prior briefing by reference:
"Plaintiff’s brief devotes a single paragraph (citing two exhibits and no testimony) to defending the jury’s willfulness finding and then suggests that the Court scavenge for more support. (See D.I. 612 at 8 (“as set forth more fully in AgroFresh’s Motion for Enhanced Damages and associated briefing and elsewhere in this brief”)). Defendants engaged in similar cross-referencing in their own briefing. . . . The Court notes that such tactics are unhelpful and largely ineffective, suggesting that arguments worth only a generic cross-reference (to an entire brief in some instances) are unimportant. Indeed, if the parties deem the effort of parsing through the record or their earlier submissions to identify support for their current positions unworthy, they can hardly expect the Court to do so."
She later referred to this practice as "an apparent end-run around the page limits[.]" Practitioners take note.
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