$1 Jury Verdict Upheld by Federal Court: A Cautionary Tale on Proving Damages in Construction Disputes
June 18, 2025On May 12, 2025, in a case captioned The Boldt Company v. Black & Veatch Construction, Inc., 1:19-cv-08383, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois reaffirmed the fundamental need for a construction claimant to prove its claimed damages are “reasonable.”
In The Boldt Co., pursuant to a prime contract on a 60-turbine wind farm in Illinois, Black & Veatch Construction, Inc. (“BVCI”) subcontracted the offloading and erection of its wind turbines to The Boldt Company (“Boldt”) for $15.4 million. After a series of performance issues, BVCI terminated Boldt and elected to complete the work itself. Boldt subsequently initiated legal action against BVCI, and BVCI responded with a counterclaim.
The Court granted summary judgment in favor of BVCI, concluding that Boldt breached the subcontract agreement and that BVCI properly terminated Boldt’s subcontract. The case proceeded to a trial solely on the issue of damages. The central question presented to the jury was the amount of money that should be awarded to BVCI to fairly compensate for Boldt’s breach of the subcontract agreement.
BVCI sought $29.4 million in damages for Boldt’s alleged breach. However, following a four-day trial, the jury awarded BVCI just one dollar ($1) in nominal damages. BVCI moved for a new trial, but Judge Andrea R. Wood denied the motion, upholding the jury’s verdict.
The Court offered several reasons why the jury could have reasonably concluded BVCI failed to meet its burden of proving damages—ultimately supporting the denial of BVCI’s motion for a new trial. The jury heard evidence that there were significant errors in cost coding in BVCI’s accounting records that required correction (affecting the jury’s ability to trust the cost records and conclude the claimed costs were incurred to complete Boldt’s work). The jury also heard evidence that BVCI’s claimed completion costs were approximately 2.5 times greater than the original subcontract agreement (again, causing the jury to question the credibility of BVCI’s claim). While BVCI claimed it was forced to self-perform the previously subcontracted work, the evidence suggested that BVCI chose not to wait for an experienced subcontractor to become available. As the Court noted, “It would not be irrational if the jury concluded that it would be unreasonable to hold Boldt liable for BVCI’s costs of learning how to do the erection work on the fly, if it believed that those costs could have been avoided by waiting for a subcontractor experienced in turbine work to become available.”
On June 10, 2025, BVCI filed a notice of appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, challenging both the Court’s Order and the jury verdict. We will continue to update this alert as new information becomes available. In any event, the jury’s verdict and Court’s conclusions in The Boldt Co. serves as a reminder that construction claimants must prove damages with reasonable certainty.
If you have any questions regarding this alert or other issues related to Construction Law, please contact Robert Golterman, Jeremy Brummond, Patrick Thornton, Taylor Essner, or any member of the Lewis Rice Construction Law Department.
The full text of the Court’s publicly-available decision can be found under “Resources” below
