Air Ambulance Network, Inc. v. Floribus, 86-2897

• Citation: 12 Fla. L. Weekly 2039,511 So.2d 702
• Decision Date: 18 August 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-2897,86-2897
• Parties: 12 Fla. L. Weekly 2039 AIR AMBULANCE NETWORK, INC., Appellant, v. Milan FLORIBUS, Migdalia Floribus, Pegasus Jet Aviation Corporation, Appellees.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Florida (US)

Page 702

511 So.2d 702

12 Fla. L. Weekly 2039

AIR AMBULANCE NETWORK, INC., Appellant, v. Milan FLORIBUS, Migdalia Floribus, Pegasus Jet Aviation Corporation, Appellees.

No. 86-2897.

District Court of Appeal of Florida,

Third District.

Aug. 18, 1987.

Rehearing Denied Sept. 18, 1987.

Lieberman, Kobrin, Burke & Pathman and Ronald Pathman, Miami, for appellant.

Alexander M. Siegel, Fort Lauderdale, for appellees.

Before SCHWARTZ, C.J., and HUBBART and JORGENSON, JJ.

SCHWARTZ, Chief Judge.

After non-jury trial, the lower court found that the employment and non-competitive agreement between Air Ambulance Network, Inc. and its employee Floribus provided for reasonable geographical and temporal limitations and had been breached only by Floribus himself in engaging in a competitive air ambulance business operated by the defendant Pegasus. ¹ Nevertheless, the trial judge denied Air Ambulance's application for a permanent injunction ² enforcing the covenant on the sole ground that it had not established "irreparable injury." This ruling was wrong and the final judgment for the defendants on review, which is wholly based upon it, is reversed.

In the sense in which it is used as a stated prerequisite for granting an injunction, the term "irreparable injury" does not refer to the degree of harm caused by the offending act, see 42 Am.Jur.2d Injunctions § 49 (1969); in other words, it is not required, as the trial judge appeared to believe, that the defendants' breach has resulted in a relatively serious or irremedial blow to the plaintiff's economic health. Rather, "irreparable" means injury "whether great or small," Anderson v. Souza, 38 Cal.2d 825, 834, 243 P.2d 497, 503 (1952), which is not "reparable", that is able to be adequately repaired or redressed in a court of law by an award of money damages. See Puga v. Suave Shoe Corp., 374 So.2d 552 (Fla. 3d DCA 1979); 17 Fla.Jur.2d Injunctions § 22 (1981). In the present area of noncompete agreements, which are validated by Section 542.33, Florida Statutes (1981), our supreme court has applied that aspect of the "irreparable injury" rule under which

[i]t is held that the term "irreparable damage" does not have reference to the amount of damage caused, but rather to the difficulty of measuring the amount of damages inflicted. Thus, an injury is irreparable where the damage is estimable only by conjecture, and not by any accurate standard.

42 Am.Jur.2d § 49, at 790. Thus in Miller Mechanical, Inc. v. Ruth, 300 So.2d 11, 12 (Fla.1974), it was said that

the normal remedy is to grant an injunction.... This is so because of the inherently difficult, although not impossible, task of determining just what damage actually is caused by the employee's breach of the agreement.

As a logical and legal extension of these principles, the court has recently and specifically held in the determinative case of Capraro v. Lanier Business Prods., Inc., 466 So.2d 212, 213 (Fla.1985), that "irreparable injury may be presumed upon the breach of a valid covenant not to compete." This conclusion, which clearly precludes inquiry into the existence of "irreparable injury," which is now deemed established as a matter of law in a case like this, requires reversal of the judgment...