United States v. Al Klaus

MEMORANDUM

A1 Shlomo Klaus appeals the award of $1,710,000 in damages following a jury trial in a civil action brought by the United States to recover fire suppression costs. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

The government’s expert damages witness, a financial analyst with the United States Forest Service, testified concerning the costs the federal government incurred to fight the Crown Fire and the Forest Service’s methods of ensuring that only costs incurred in fighting the Crown Fire, as opposed to those relating to the contemporaneous Foothill Fire, were attributed to that fire. This testimony, coupled with the government’s extensive documentary evidence of its expenses, was sufficient to support the jury’s damages award. See L.A. Mem’l Coliseum Comm’n v. Nat’l Football League, 791 F.2d 1356 , 1365-66 (9th Cir.1986).

Klaus argues that the jury’s damages award was necessarily speculative because the jury (1) rejected the full amount of damages claimed by the government and (2) deliberated for only one day, a purportedly insufficient amount of time to examine “each piece of paper” produced by the government “to ascertain if charges were properly…