Does a jury have any authority or responsibility to determine contract contract damages?

contract damages presented "an open factual question for the jury to decide" and that juries possess " 'relatively unfettered authority and responsibility' to calculate damages. (Quoting Garfoot v. Avila (1989) 213 Cal.App.3d 1205, 1210, 261 Cal.Rptr. 924.) Thus, defendant asserts, "the trial court properly presented the damages issue to the jury as an open fact question for them to decide...." This observation might be germane if jurors had decided that question by, e.g., finding that the options were worth less than plaintiff claimedthough no evidentiary basis for such a finding readily appears. But the point is academic because jurors failed to answer the "open factual question" to which defendant refers. Instead, in seeming disregard of the plain instructions in the verdict form, they awarded a different kind of damages than those to which, as the parties tacitly agreed, plaintiff was entitled by law.