ST. LOUIS – A trucking company's request to set aside a verdict and grant a new trial in breach of contract dispute with a freight broker was recently denied in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw, in a ruling filed July 19, denied defendant Davis Transfer Company’s motion to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial in the case brought by plaintiff Hogan Logistics. Inc.
Davis had filed the motion after a Feb. 28 jury verdict that found in favor of Hogan in the Broker-Carrier Agreement dispute. The defendant alleged that the “jury’s verdict was against the weight of evidence,” and that the “court erred by refusing to give Davis’ proposed jury instruction No. 34 on its estoppel defense.”
Shaw disagreed and noted these complaints in his arguments to support the verdict and deny the motion to grant a new trial.
This court case stemmed from a 2013 Broker-Carrier Agreement entered into by Hogan and Davis which resulted in a breach-of-contract claim by the plaintiff Hogan Logistics.
In the July 19 filing, Shaw described the “miscarriage of justice” of a first trial was the “key question.” Although the Traffic Solicitation Clause and its definition of “traffic” was originally in question and disputed in the two-day jury trial, Shaw did not find that a “miscarriage of justice occurred as a result of the jury’s verdict.”
Additionally, the question of the estoppel defense was based on “evidence that Hogan’s Mr. Strickler misled its president, Todd Davis, into believing that Davis could solicit business from its former customer Imperial Sugar without penalty, as expressed in Mr. Strickler’s email of July 15, 2009.”
In response, Shaw stated that Davis’ proposed instruction “No. 34” failed to meet the required criteria for the non-Missouri approved instruction. Further, the court stated that this argument did “not correctly state the applicable law.” The defendant, according to the court document, did not “establish that a new trial is warranted based on the court’s refusal to submit its equitable estoppel instruction to the jury.”
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Case Number 4:16-CV-1542 CAS