Cosgrove v. Bartolotta
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
150 F.3d 729 (1998)
Bartolotta (defendant) promised Cosgrove (plaintiff) a 19 percent ownership stake in a restaurant in exchange for a loan and free legal and financial services, which Cosgrove provided, but Bartolotta never gave him the promised stake; a jury awarded Cosgrove $117,000 for promissory estoppel (an expectation-damages measure), $17,000 for unjust enrichment (a reliance-based measure), and $1,000 for misrepresentation, and the trial court set aside only the promissory-estoppel verdict.
Whether, where a promisor, in the absence of a contract, makes a definite promise that such promisor fails to perform, the promisee may be awarded both expectation damages for promissory estoppel and reliance damages for other claims deriving from the broken promise.