Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 723421.pdf

Citation: Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 723421.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
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Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/723421.pdf ↗

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As to the second motion, the jury's verdict against Lodis regarding
breach of fiduciary duty is that law of the case. Lodis will therefore
not be permitted to re-litigate the issue by arguing, for example, that
the acceptance of the vacation pay-out after his termination
precludes a breach of fiduciary duty claim. The focus at trial will be
on whether Corbis would have terminated Lodis had it known about
Lodis' failure to record vacation time.

Judge Heller later ruled that evidence of the verdict from the second jury

on Corbis's breach of fiduciary duty claim was relevant and, hence, admissible

under the rules of evidence, reasoning as follows:

There are some other prior jury verdicts. I am going to allow
the juryto hear that a prior juryfound that Mr. Lodis violated his
breach of fiduciary duty by failing to record his vacation time ....
My reasoning for doing that is one of the issues in the after-
acquired evidence defense that will be raised by Corbis is that they
have to show that Mr. Lodis's conduct was serious. And then, of
course, they have to show that if they had known about it, they
would have terminated him.
The fact that a prior jury found that he breached his fiduciary
duty is clearly relevant to the seriousness issue.

5. The Trial Court Allows The Jury To Consider Corbis's After-Acquired
Evidence Defense.

10
             
No. 72342-1-1/11

Prior to the third trial, Lodis moved for judgment as a matter of law under

CR 50 on Corbis's after-acquired evidence defense.8 The trial court denied

Lodis's motion, reasoning as follows: