No future, no future damages.

(This is a crosspost from 600Hemphill.) The Energizer Bunny, famously, keeps on going. Not so, the contract between Pura-Flo and Donald Clanton, under which Pura-Flo committed to pay Clanton a monthly fee for the use of fifty water coolers. The supreme court reversed and rendered as to an award of future damages in a lawsuit between them, observing:

“Here, no evidence indicated the contract would endure for any length of time, let alone five years after trial. Perhaps, as the court of appeals suggested, the jury sought to award Clanton either the amount Vanderzyden originally paid Pura-Flo to buy the water coolers in 1994 or the amount Pura-Flo’s investment proposal claimed the company would pay to repurchase the water coolers after sixty months. But neither suggested rationale can be the basis for an award of future damages, which, as evidenced by its name, is an award for damages that Clanton was reasonably certain to incur in the future. Without evidence that the contract would continue in the future, the jury’s $50,000 future-damages award has no reasonable basis in evidence and therefore was not reasonably certain as required by law.”

Pura-Flo Corp. v. Clanton, No. 20-0964 (Nov. 19, 2021) (per curiam) (citations omitted, emphasis added).