Measuring Business Interruption Losses and Other Commercial Damages

Now fully revised and updated, focused on commercial litigation and the many common types of cases, this is the only book in the field to explain the complicated process of measuring business interruption damages. The book features an easy to understand and apply, step-by-step process for how losses should be measured so as to be accurate and reliable and consistent with the relevant laws.

With a new chapter on the economics of punitive damages, the new edition also explains detailed methods for measuring damages in contract litigation, intellectual property lawsuits, antitrust, and securities cases. This new Second Edition incorporates the latest developments in the fields of economics and accounting, while also integrating the most current changes in case law.

Here's what you will find

• Each chapter includes new materials and updated content
• Added websites for sources of data
• Includes a website for updated tables that can be utilized by readers
• A section of the new cases involving Daubert challenges to economists
• Includes methods on how to do industry research
• A new section covering the equity risk premium and the various recent research studies, which set forth the debate on what the premium should be

Containing exhibits, tables, and graphs, new cases involving Dauber, how to do industry research, equity risk premium, research studies on the marketability discount, anti-trust, punitive damages, and more, Measuring Business Interruption Losses and Other Commercial Damages, Second Edition incorporates the relevant literature and research that has come out in this field over the past four years.

First, the material related to evidence and expert testimony - this book covers qualifications, expert roles and advice to the expert, and expert reports and admissibility of evidence with respect to economic, accounting and damages experts. More importantly, the author provides excellent advice on using experts from multiple disciplines, which is prudent given the complexity of measuring business interruption losses. The material about this aspect of the book is not only consistent with the book I cited above in general terms, but also went much deeper, and completely addressed the issues and factors associated with the subject from a legal point of view.

The second aspect of this book, the methodologies for analyzing loss attacks the problem from multiple angles, which can be aggregated or tailored to the legal theory of a particular case. The angles include an economic framework for the lost profits estimation process, and how to conduct a business interruption loss analysis. The book goes into more depth with a comprehensive description for conducting an industry analysis, especially with respect to relating overall industry growth to the plaintiff's growth, and in-depth chapters on projecting lost revenues and cost analysis and profitability. The methodologies alone or in total are complete, and should meet and Rule 104(a), (e), or Rule 703 test (i.e., "Daubert" issues).

Unintended benefits from this book came in the methodologies. I am an IT consultant who specializes in service management, which encompasses business continuity and system availability, among other things. The methodologies, I discovered, can be as easily applied to a proactive approach to determining cost of system unavailability of company-critical systems as they can be in determining after-the-fact losses. This allows realistic impact analyses that show costs, trade-offs and affects on the loss of critical systems. Not so coincidently, this same data can be used in court to show prior due diligence if loses do occur based on third-party breaches of contracts or warranty issues. More importantly, even though this book was written before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the methodologies given in this book can be used to validate compliance with certain sections of the act, most notably 404 (also, to a degree, 302, 409 and 906).

Overall, this book is one of the best professional investments I've made - and the reasons for it are purely serendipitous.


Happy with my purchase   January 19, 2009
Claudia Brambilla Rmz
0 out of 2 found this review helpful

I am happy with my purchase; the information is indeed useful and the service was of great quality.