Reasonable Certainty and Lost Profits in Early-Stage Companies

BVResearch Pro
Training Event Transcripts
October 15, 2010
Neil J. Beaton, CPA/ABV, CFA, ASA
Robert M. Lloyd, Attorney at Law

Summary

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.
Reasonable Certainty and Lost Profits in Early Stage Companies
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