Wash. Court of Appeals published opinion — 723421.pdf

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

Related Parts of This Source

Full Text

1,751 chars

-23
             
No. 72342-1-1/24

rejected Lodis's claims of error and affirmed the verdict. The jury's finding that

Lodis had breached a fiduciary duty owed to Corbis by failing to record vacation

time thus became the law of the case.

Because the law of the case doctrine prohibited Lodis from relitigating the

jury's verdict in the trial court, whether Lodis breached a fiduciary duty owed to

Corbis was not a fact at issue in the proceedings on remand. Therefore, the

evidence that Lodis sought to have admitted was not material. The trial court did

not abuse its discretion by excluding irrelevant evidence. To the contrary, it

properly declined Lodis's invitation to undermine both the jury's verdict and the

appellate court's mandate in contravention of the law of the case doctrine.

B

Lodis next asserts that the trial court erred "in admitting testimony

regarding the second jury verdict and ... the actual second jury's verdict on

Corbis' breach of fiduciary duty counter-claim." Br. of Appellant at 4.

Preliminarily, we note that Lodis's argument regarding the breach of

fiduciary duty verdict is muddled. At times, it is presented as inextricably linked
to Lodis's relitigation argument—that is, he seems to be arguing that, because he
should have been permitted to relitigate whether he had breached a fiduciary

duty owed to Corbis, the jury's verdict that he, in fact, did so lacks relevance.
Given our resolution of the immediately preceding issue, to the extent that Lodis

so argues, his claim fails.

At other times, Lodis seems make an argument similar to his argument

regarding the first jury's age discrimination verdict—that is, he argues that, even