![]() ![]() College of Architecture - Texas A&M University 1983) 6 Moore's Federal Practice p 55.06, at 55-53.Profile written by Allan Harl Thomas. Thus, when one district court prematurely awarded punitive damages against a defaulting defendant that a jury later refused to award against a nondefaulting codefendant, the default judgment was vacated with instructions that it be reduced to an amount consistent with the damages awarded against the nondefaulter. See In re Uranium Antitrust Litigation, 617 F.2d 1248, 1261-62 (7th Cir. ![]() This is not because the nondefaulters would be bound by the damage determination against the defaulters, but to avoid the problems of dealing with inconsistent damage determinations against jointly and severally liable defendants. When there are multiple defendants who may be jointly and severally liable for damages alleged by plaintiff, and some but less than all of those defendants default, the better practice is for the district court to stay its determination of damages against the defaulters until plaintiff's claim against the nondefaulters is resolved. Based upon this barren record, we agree with the district court that PAI's claim of actual damages over and above the infringer's profits was simply too speculative to support such an award. There was no evidence demonstrating that the $20,000 figure did not include a portion of the unpaid PAI fees previously billed to AmeriTen, which would not be allowable damages for M & S's infringement. There was no evidence that Chouteau would have paid such a fee, when M & S's entire architectural fee for this work had been less than $11,000. Louis." There was no evidence establishing PAI's normal profit margin for comparable work or even demonstrating that the $20,000 represented profit and not gross revenue. Walter Pfanenstiel testified that the $20,000 figure represented the architectural fee he would have charged "to build the two buildings here in Kansas City and also to design and draw a third building which was not built." The figure was "based on the average of the units we did there, how much we had spent on the ones we had done in Dallas, and the ones we had done in St. Therefore, to be awarded actual damages, PAI must prove that its profit on this business would have been greater than M & S's profit of $3,000, which the district court awarded. Here, there was no evidence that M & S's infringing use of PAI's drawings in Kansas City deprived PAI of any business other than the infringing use itself-the furnishing of the drawings to Chouteau for the architect's fee on the projects. 1985), or where the copyright owner's provable profit margin is greater than the infringer's, see Robert R. The Copyright Act allows recovery of actual damages, in addition to the infringer's profits, in recognition that some types of infringement inflict more harm to the copyright owner than the benefit reaped by the infringer, for example, where the infringer's minimal use forecloses a broader market, see Cream Records, Inc. ![]()
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