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amount of damages petitioner received on his fraudulent
inducement claim was affected by any personal injuries that he
might have suffered.
In the USI litigation, the jury awarded petitioner $8.1
million in compensatory fraud damages but only $1 on his breach
of contract claim. From this circumstance, petitioners would
have us deduce that the entire $8.1 million fraud damages award
was for noneconomic, personal injuries. Their argument on
supplemental brief is as follows:
Clearly, the jury understood Mr. Gregg’s contract
claim, but elected to award damages to Mr. Gregg for
his personal injury, not any injury to an economic,
contract, or property right he possessed. The fact
that Mr. Gregg was awarded nominal damages on his
contract claim indicates that the jury intended the
fraud damages to compensate some other injury.
Petitioners’ argument is a non sequitur. Implicit in their
argument is an assumption that damages awarded on a fraudulent
inducement claim cannot compensate for economic losses--a
proposition for which petitioners cite no authority and which, as
previously discussed, is contrary to Florida jurisprudence. See
HTP, Ltd. v. Lineas Aereas Costarricenses, S.A., supra at 1238;
Woodson v. Martin, 685 So. 2d 1240 (Fla. 1996). The fact that
the same measure of damages might have been employed under the
breach of contract claim does not preclude the tort remedy to
recover economic losses. See La Pesca Grande Charters, Inc. v.
Moran, 704 So. 2d 710, 712 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1998). It seems
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