Rapper Flo-Rida awarded $82 Million Dollars in endorsement contract dispute with Celsius corporation. Jurors have sent a powerful message and Flo Rida’s attorney has obviously strategized brilliantly for his client. The outcome of the trial, the jury’s verdict awarding such massive damages signals that there was a financial injustice committed and he was taken advantage of by the Celsius Corporation.
The bottom line and I have always stressed this point to clients and potential clients in the past, before entering into any business relationship there must be a sound written agreement setting forth clear and specific duties, responsibilities and valuations involved in the transaction. Wishing doesn’t make it so. There is a reason why it’s best for all parties to a contract, especially in these more complex endorsement and promotional deals to get it in writing. Even if it is reduced to writing, as it was in this case, the terms should be clear and understandable.
You should first have a “meeting of the minds”. This simply means that all parties should be on the same page about the range and scope of the agreement. Otherwise, the parties can easily get caught up in ambiguities that provide loopholes for those who are not operating in good faith, so to speak, to sway to their pecuniary advantage. Which appears to be what Celsius did here. Several terms were either left out or unspecified as to quantity and duration. How many drinks and how long? In general, ambiguities and vaguaries in agreements provide a window for finagling a business relationship to one’s advantage or to the other’s disadvantage. You may observe a party creating outright scenarios or concealing situations in which they are as the classic adage goes, “chasing with the fox and running with the hounds”, committing clear yet hidden breaches of trust or deviations from the original intent and terms of the agreement—“conflicts of interest”.
Now that the jury’s award is in and the case concluded at trial, the question becomes whether the attorneys for Defendant Celsius corporation will attempt to file pleadings, in this instance, a remittitur, to have the damage award reduced. Whether it will be used as a bargaining chip to induce a monetary settlement by the Plaintiff at a lower figure remains to be seen. Whichever way the case is ultimately resolved it appears that Flo Rida could use a good money manager and at a $30 Million Net worth according to Wealthy Gorilla he probably already has one.
Flo Rida initially asked for $30,000 dollars in damages. But he ended up getting much more than that. Sometimes God will give you more than you ask for when human wrongs are corrected by God’s justice. God will open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing you won’t have room enough to contain.
