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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS


EXCEL INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, INC, Plaintiff-Appellant, v DEBRA BLANCO, Defendant-Appellee.

UNPUBLISHED June 30, 1998

No. 196899 Macomb Circuit Court LC No. 94-005870 CK

Before: McDonald, P.J., and Neff and Smolenski, JJ. PER CURIAM. Plaintiff appeals as of right the trial court's grant of defendant's motion for directed verdict on plaintiff's claims of breach of fiduciary duties, fraud, tortious interference with advantageous business transactions, misappropriation of trade secrets and business defamation and the jury's verdict awarding defendant $3574.11 in unpaid commissions. We affirm. First, plaintiff challenges the trial court's grant of defendant's directed verdict motion. Plaintiff erroneously claims that the court raised the motion sua sponte. Defendant moved for directed verdict on all of plaintiff's claims, relying in part on earlier motions for summary disposition. By failing to provide authority that the trial court's failure to allow defendant to fully present her motion constitutes reversible error per se, plaintiff has waived this issue on appeal. Mitchell v Dahlberg, 215 Mich App 718, 728; 547 NW2d 74 (1996). The court ordered directed verdict on all of plaintiff's claims. While plaintiff asserts that it presented evidence that defendant made defamatory and slanderous statements against it, plaintiff fails to directly address the trial court's ruling on its business defamation claim. "A mere statement of position is insufficient to bring an issue before this Court." Meagher v Wayne State Univ , 222 Mich App 700, 718; 565 NW2d 401 (1997). Plaintiff has not separately or specifically challenged the trial court's ruling with regard to its claim of breach of fiduciary duties, which the court also dismissed on directed verdict. Thus, plaintiff has abandoned this issue. Id. We are left with plaintiff's challenge of the court's ruling regarding its claims of tortious interference with business relations, misappropriation of trade secrets and fraud. The trial court found -1

that plaintiff failed to adequately prove its damages, noting that it did not establish its loss of net income or a measure of damages. We agree that plaintiff failed to provide adequate proof of the damages caused by defendant. This Court reviews the trial court's ruling on a motion for directed verdict de novo. Meagher, supra at 708. In reviewing a ruling on a motion for directed verdict, this Court considers "the evidence and all legitimate inferences drawn from the evidence in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party." Mason v Royal Dequindre Inc, 455 Mich 391, 397; 566 NW2d 199 (1997). Directed verdict should be granted only when there exists no factual question upon which reasonable minds can differ. Meagher, supra at 708. The party bringing a claim bears the burden of proving damages with reasonable certainty. Berrios v Miles, Inc, 226 Mich App 470, 478; 574 NW2d 677 (1997). "Although damages based on speculation or conjecture are not recoverable, damages are not speculative merely because they cannot be ascertained with mathematical precision." Id., citations omitted. It is sufficient if there exists a reasonable basis for computing damages, although the result of the computation is approximate. Id. Recovery is barred where there exists uncertainty regarding the existence of damages rather than the amount of damages. Denha v Jacob, 179 Mich App 545, 550; 446 NW2d 303 (1989). Plaintiff's argument regarding the trial court's erroneous ruling rests in part on its assertion that in a tort action lost profits need not be established as net profits. While the cases instructing that a plaintiff must prove net profits involved breach of contract, Lawton v Gorman Furniture, 90 Mich App 258, 267; 282 NW2d 797 (1979), citing Benfield v HK Porter Co, 1 Mich App 543, 547; 137 NW2d 273 (1965); The Vogue v Shopping Centers, Inc, 402 Mich 546, 550-552; 266 NW2d 148 (1978), plaintiff has provided no reasoning to support its position that, for purposes of lost profits, there is a distinction between damages for a tort and damages in a contract action. Moreover, in that a plaintiff in a tortious interference action may recover "the pecuniary loss of the benefits of the contract or the prospective relation," 4 Restatement Torts,

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