Kenford Co. Inc. v. County Of Erie

489 N.Y.S.2d 939 (1985)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

County (D) contracted with Kenford (P) to construct and operate a domed stadium facility near Buffalo. The contract provided for construction to commence within 12 months of the contract date and a mutually acceptable 40-year lease for the operation of the facility to be agreed upon by the parties, or in the alternative if the 40-year lease could not be agreed upon in three months a 20-year management contract appended to the basic agreement would be signed. The parties never agreed upon the terms of the lease. The contract was breached because the construction of the facility did not begin within the one-year time period or any time thereafter. The damage trial lasted nine months, consuming over 25,000 pages of transcript. Ps attempted to prove that the breach caused them to suffer $495,000,000 in damages, including lost profits on a baseball franchise, a theme park, three hotels, an office park, a golf course, and a specialty retail center. Plaintiffs also sought to recover lost profit on the management contract, loss of appreciation in the value of the land surrounding the stadium site, and out-of-pocket expenses incurred in reliance on the contract. The court dismissed claims of lost profits on the peripheral land development and the baseball franchise as being too speculative. The jury, which awarded lost profits of $25.6 million on the management contract. The jury also awarded$18,000,000 for its lost appreciation in land value, and it granted over $6,000,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. This appeal resulted.