Breach of an employment contract; Whether the cumulative overpayment recognized in an agreement continued to grow due to overpayments in successive years or whether that amount was fixed; Interpreting contract language according to its plain & ordinary meaning; Bank of Am., NA v. First Am. Title Ins. Co.; Calculation of damages; Chelsea Inv. Group, LLC v. Chelsea; Offsetting of severance from a damages award; Failure to preserve an argument; Detroit Leasing Co. v. Detroit; Failure to support an argument; Mitcham v. Detroit

Holding that the trial court correctly interpreted the contract and did not clearly err in its determination of damages, the court affirmed. Plaintiff previously employed defendant, who signed an employment agreement in 2013 addressing his “negative equity position within the company.” It provided that he had a “cumulative overpayment in compensation from [plaintiff] in the amount of $200,000.” After he resigned in 2015, plaintiff demanded that he “pay $317,145.20, in what plaintiff claimed was negative equity owed by defendant under the 2013 agreement.” Defendant refused to pay, resulting in plaintiff suing him for breach of contract. The primary issue was whether the $200,000 cumulative overpayment recognized in the parties “agreement continued to grow to the extent there were overpayments in successive years, or whether that amount was fixed.” Plaintiff argued that the trial court erred when it determined “that the cumulative overpayment that defendant was required to repay was fixed at $200,000.” The court disagreed. The agreement “identified a $200,000 cumulative overpayment representing defendant’s historical negative equity.” The trial court did not err when it held “that under the terms of the agreement, that amount did not rise on the basis of overpayments in successive years” and the court affirmed its conclusion. “Plaintiff had the contractual right to reduce defendant’s salary based on later yearly overpayments but did not do so until July 2015, leading the trial court to observe that ‘[t]he problem for which Plaintiff now complains is of its own making and the result of its own inaction.’”