CHICAGO (LN) — U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin granted remittitur on Friday, cutting a jury award in favor of Sonrai Systems LLC from $58.9 million to roughly $10.4 million. The reduction followed the court's finding that the plaintiff's damages expert relied on speculative assumptions regarding fleetwide rollouts with Waste Management and Republic Services.
The jury had originally awarded Sonrai $28.9 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages against The Heil Co. d/b/a Environmental Solutions Group, along with $1 in punitive damages against former Sonrai executive Anthony M. Romano. The award stemmed from a two-week trial in June 2025. The jury found that Heil tortiously induced Romano to breach his fiduciary duties and breached a 2014 Letter Agreement by soliciting Romano and using Sonrai's confidential data to develop a competing product called Enhance.
Judge Durkin upheld the liability findings, rejecting Heil's argument that the evidence was insufficient to prove the company knowingly colluded with Romano to steal proprietary information. The court noted that while there was no direct evidence of Heil ordering the data theft, the jury could reasonably infer from emails and testimony that Heil executives urgently reached out to Romano after he expressed dissatisfaction with Sonrai, knowing he was still employed there, and subsequently hired him to help build Enhance.
However, the judge found the damages calculation for two of the five customers identified by Sonrai's expert, Suzanne Stuckwisch, was unsupported. Stuckwisch had testified that Sonrai would have secured fleetwide rollouts with Progressive, Waste Management, Republic, Waste Corp. of America, and Casella, totaling $72.5 million in lost profits.
The court determined that while there was evidence Progressive was considering a fleetwide rollout, the assumptions for Waste Management and Republic were "based on conjecture." For Waste Management, the court found no evidence the company had committed to purchasing Sonrai's Vector product, noting that an email about a "broader arrangement" did not equate to a fleetwide contract. Similarly, for Republic, the court rejected reliance on an unsigned quote for 48 units and an email discussing a competitor's technology, stating Stuckwisch admitted there was no evidence Republic ever paid for or installed the devices.
Consequently, the court remitted the damages for Waste Management and Republic entirely, leaving only the $5.20 million award for Progressive. To maintain the roughly 1:1 ratio between compensatory and punitive damages established, the judge reduced Heil's punitive damages from $30 million to $5.20 million.
The court also denied Sonrai's motion for prejudgment interest and ongoing compensation, ruling that the damages were not liquidated or easily computed and that Illinois law generally requires a withholding of funds to award such interest in fiduciary duty cases.
The reduction leaves Sonrai with a final judgment of roughly $10.4 million, a fraction of the original $58.9 million award, after the court found the plaintiff failed to prove with reasonable certainty that the two largest lost customers would have adopted its technology on a fleetwide basis.