David White v. Empire Express, Inc. and Empire Transportation, Inc.

The case involves a lease-purchase agreement. The plaintiff is a truck driver. The co-defendants are two affiliated companies – a truckload hauling company and a leasing company. The plaintiff truck driver worked for the hauling company. The truck driver entered into a lease-purchase agreement with the leasing company to purchase the truck he drove in his work for the hauling company. His lease payments on the truck were made via weekly payroll deductions; the hauling company deducted the amount of the lease payments from the truck driver’s payroll and transferred those amounts to the leasing company on his behalf. If the driver earned less than the amount of the lease payment, the hauling company paid the lease payment anyway and the deficiency became a debt that the truck driver owed to the hauling company. At the end of the lease, the lease-purchase agreement required the truck driver to pay the residual value of the truck. He was allowed to pay this over the course of one year, also through weekly payroll deductions. After the final residual payment was made, the leasing company refused to give title of the truck to the plaintiff truck driver because he still owed money to the affiliated hauling company. The defendant leasing company then repossessed the truck and sold it. The plaintiff truck driver filed this lawsuit against both defendant companies, alleging breach of contract, conversion, and violation of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act. The trial court granted summary judgment to the truck driver on his breach-of-contract claim, and it conducted a bench trial on the breach-of- contract damages and the remaining claims. At the conclusion of the trial, the trial court held in favor of the plaintiff on all of his claims and awarded both compensatory and punitive damages. The defendants now appeal. We affirm the award of compensatory damages and reverse the award of punitive damages.