Though never simple, lost profits and damages cases are acutely difficult in the two areas covered in Part 2 of BVR's Webinar Series on Damages Essentials: reasonable certainty and early stage company claims.  In their presentation, Robert Lloyd, the Lindsay Young Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, and expert appraiser Neil Beaton will show how the complexity of these two issues have evolved, what they mean for your reports and testimony, and how to best approach them in lost profits cases.

In the first part of our presentation, Lloyd will show that though every United States jurisdiction has adopted a rule requiring plaintiffs to prove lost profits within reasonable certainty, no court has actually defined what this means, and some have even confessed to not knowing at all.  Beaton will then cover how to assess lost profits claims for early stage or start up companies that usually lack a track record of operating results, thereby nullifying the applicability of many of the usual lost profits analysis techniques.

• Making the court confident the estimate is accurate
  • Using verifiable data
  • The plaintiff's track record
  • The number of risks in the projections
• The fact of damages vs. the amount of damages
• The effect of the defendant's moral fault
• The extent of proof vs. the amount at stake
• Alternative measures of damages

• Learn how to prepare a lost profits analysis such that the court understands your methodology, reasoning, and ultimately, your conclusion.
• Understand how courts view lost profits analysis and what you can do to the prepare for these idiosyncrasies.
• Learn how lost profits and economic damages calculations should be performed for early stage companies.
• Understand where and why early stage damages cases arise and how those factors impact the appraiser's analysis.