The biggest mistakes made by top BV experts
“What was your biggest mistake—and how did you recover?” That was one of the “hardball” questions thrown to the panel at the AICPA BV conference in Vegas. Categorically, “the worst thing is an unexpected error that you didn’t plan for,” said Jay Fishman (Financial Research Associates). “We’re in the confidence business,” he said, and mistakes “can [...]
Judges: Tax Court door is ‘open’ to tax-affecting
Moderator Jay Fishman (Financial Research Associates) took on the “puzzling, controversial” topic of tax-affecting with the panel of Tax Court judges in Part III of BVR’s Tax Summit last Friday, hosted by Georgetown Univ. Law Center. Although none of the judges has presided over a case in which the issue came up—“I’m looking forward to it,” [...]
Will the Tax Court hire independent appraisers?
The one case in Tax Court that raises this issue is Judge Laro‘s BancOne, where the Court needed to value derivatives. Laro brought in an expert he could trust because, at least partially, he perceived that he would otherwise face a situation with “exotic” testimony from competing experts–neither of which Laro felt competent to compare. [...]
Newsflashes from today’s discovery and evidence symposia with Fannon and Dunitz
The rules of discovery were designed to avoid “trial by ambush” by requiring full disclosure–even if the discovery of evidence that might not be admissible at trial–says attorney Jonathan Dunitz, leading off today’s BVR session on discovery and evidence in damages litigation. The result can be overly broad discovery requests, since the standard is simply [...]
Over 30 years later, the judge remembers this BV expert
The Hon. Peter J. Panuthos, Chief Special Trial Judge for the U.S. Tax Court, still recalls his first experience with expert witnesses and valuation. It was 1978, he told attendees at the 2011 fall meeting of the ABA Section of Taxation and Section of Real Property, Trust & Estate Law in Denver last week. He was [...]
Caught in the valuation crossfire, judges fire back by appointing their own experts
It’s not unusual for a federal court to appoint a technical expert as an independent advisor pursuant to Rule 706 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. But now, in two high-pressure and high-profile legal settings, judges have taken the unusual step of appointing a 706 expert to testify specifically on valuation—in one case, to calculate [...]
Expert reliance on entire market value rule wins one, loses one
Expert reliance on entire market value rule wins one, loses one The law in patent infringement cases is clear: the entire market value rule permits recovery of damages based on the value on an entire apparatus containing multiple features, if the patented feature constitutes the basis for consumer demand. That was the recent holding by [...]
Federal court asks experts for the ‘just right’ discount rate
A bankrupt chemical business didn’t owe $16.3 million in damages for breach of contract, because the claims were barred by the statute of limitations and a prior settlement. But just in case—the federal district court considered an issue that was certain to come up on an appeal: calculation of the discount rate to present value [...]
PwC updates study on Daubert challenges to appraisers and financial experts
PricewaterhouseCoopers has just released its Daubert Challenges to Financial Experts:An 11-year study of trends and outcomes, which surveys federal cases since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1999 Kumho Tire decision expanded Daubert’s reach to financial experts. Highlights of this year’s report include: This past year (2010) saw the most challenges and the second highest exclusion rate for all expert [...]
Porter: Expert ‘disasters’ I have seen (and how to avoid them)
“Most lawyers will not take on your analysis directly,” John Porter (Baker Botts LLP, Houston) told VRT attendees in California last week. “Instead, they will nibble around the edges to find some ‘gotchyas’ to impeach your credibility.” And just how will they gnaw at your testimony? Porter, one of the most experienced trial and appellate [...]
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