PERMA BUILDERS, INC., APPELLANT,
v.
JBM ASSOCIATES, INC., ET AL., APPELLEES

Fla. 4th DCA | 1985-07-31
No. 84-918
DOWNEY, HURLEY and BARKETT, JJ., concur.
472 So. 2d 1381 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (1985) Positive Treatment
Cited by 2 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.

Synopsis

Perma Builders appeals a judgment awarding JBM Associates damages for costs incurred in partial performance of a construction contract that Perma terminated. The appellate court affirmed the trial court's award, holding that the evidence adequately supported the damage calculations despite some uncertainty regarding allocation of costs across multiple projects.


Holding

The trial court's damage award was properly supported by evidence and is affirmed. The trial judge's finding that costs attributable to other projects were minimal and inconsequential was factually sound, and the three percent variance between the percentage of payroll attributable to Olympus Village and the percentage of taxes awarded does not render the award unsupported by evidence.


Headnotes

[1] Uncertainty as to the amount of damages or difficulty in proving the exact amount will not prevent recovery where it is clear that substantial damages were suffered and t…

[2] Every item of expense need not be proved to recover damages for breach of contract.

Previewing 2 of 5 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Key Quotes

“Uncertainty as to the amount of damages or difficulty in proving the exact amount will not prevent recovery where it is clear that substantial damages were suffered and there is a reasonable basis in the evidence for the amount awarded.”

Establishes the governing legal standard for breach of contract damages, allowing recovery despite some uncertainty in calculation.

Previewing 1 of 3 key quotes on this case — the court’s exact language, pinpointed for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Facts & Procedural History

Perma Builders contracted with JBM Associates to construct building shells for the Olympus Village project at a cost of $678,469. Perma terminated the…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

This case involves an appeal from a final judgment in a construction contract dispute.

Appellee, JBM Associates, Inc., contracted with appellant, Perma Builders, Inc., to construct the shells of two buildings for Perma Builders’ Olympus Village project, at a cost of $678,469. Prior to completion of the job, Perma Builders terminated the contract and filed suit for damages against JBM. JBM counter-claimed for reimbursement of costs reasonably incurred in the good faith partial performance of the contract.

The trial court found JBM proved it was entitled to certain costs, which included the sum of $41,437 for JBM’s liability under a judgment to Lonestar (a supplier of cement for the project), and the sum of $32,853 for a tax lien due to the I.R.S. for withholding taxes in connection with the project.

The main thrust of appellant’s arguments on appeal is that the amounts awarded for the Lonestar judgment and the I.R.S. lien are unsupported by the evidence because they include charges for work on other projects that appellee was involved in before the date the Olympus Village project began. That being the case, argues appellant, appellee must differentiate the costs attributable to the respective jobs in order to recover. Appellant relies upon Houdaille-Duval-Wright Company v. Charldon Construction Company, 266 So. 2d 106 (Fla. 3d DCA 1972). While we do not disagree with the holding of the cited case, we would distinguish it and demonstrate its inapplicability here. In Charl-don the appellate court held that the gross payroll used by the appellee upon which to assess its damages for appellant’s delay included substantial items of payroll not attributable to the job in question. It found appellee had included salaries for two bookkeepers, the corporation’s purchasing agent and the salary of a person who was working on numerous jobs during the same period.

In the present case, the trial judge found that the items included in the amounts claimed for the Olympus Village project that may have been attributable to other projects were minimal and of no real consequence. JBM’s president, Mr. Ware, testified that substantially all of the invoice charges related to the Olympus Village project; the only items invoiced prior to the date the Olympus Village project commenced amounted to approximately $100. Mr. Ware’s testimony convinced the trial judge that those items were so small as to be of no consequence in the damage picture.

With regard to the I.R.S. claim for unpaid withholding taxes, Ware testified that, had appellant not breached the contract, appellee would have been able to pay those taxes. Furthermore, the record supports a finding that the payroll figures for the third and fourth quarters of 1979 (the period in issue) show that approximately seventy-two percent of appellee’s payroll was attributable to the Olympus Village project. The $32,853 awarded for this constitutes seventy-five percent of the total in payroll taxes, which appellee owes for said period. Thus, we are talking about a three percent variable at worst. The applicable rule in determining damages for breach of contract is set forth in our case of Adams v. Dreyfus Interstate Development Corp., 352 So. 2d 76, 78 (Fla. 4th DCA 1977), wherein it is stated:

Uncertainty as to the amount of damages or difficulty in proving the exact amount will not prevent recovery where it is clear that substantial damages were suffered and there is a reasonable basis in the evidence for the amount awarded.

Every item of expense need not be proved. Id. We cannot set aside a damage award in a breach of contract action because we might disagree with the amount or because we might have ruled differently on the same proof. Id.; see also McDevitt & Street Co. v. Department of General Services, 377 So. 2d 191 (Fla. 1st DCA 1979). The determination of the amount of costs incurred by JBM was a question of fact, and the trial court’s resolution of that question comes to us clothed with a presumption of correctness. E.g., Industrial Builders, Inc. v. Heritage Insurance Company of America, 416 So. 2d 1244, 1246 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982). We hold that the record here adequately supports the trial judge’s findings and application of the aforementioned rule of law.

Accordingly, the judgment appealed from is affirmed.

AFFIRMED.

DOWNEY, HURLEY and BARKETT, JJ., concur.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

  • Vorsteg v. Thomas, 853 So. 2d 1102 (Fla. 4th DCA 2003)
    …e there is conflicting evidence, the weight to attach to their opinions. See Easkold v. Rhodes, 614 So. 2d 495, 498 (Fla.1993). A damages award supported by competent, substantial evidence should be affirmed. See Perma Builders, Inc. v. JBM Assocs., 472 So. 2d 1381, 1383 (Fla. 4th DCA 1985); see also Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. v. McKenna, 726 So. 2d 361, 363-64 (Fla. 3d DCA 1999). We also conclude that the award in this case is not so excessive as to shock the judicial conscience, given the severe injuries…

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw