Quantifying Losses

The forensic accountant’s role in these cases is usually to assist legal teams with quantifying past and future economic loss arising from a motor vehicle accident or other incident, insured or otherwise.

The starting point for helping a prospective plaintiff is to understand whether there has been an economic loss that can be attributed to the relevant cause of action. This will involve gaining an understanding of the business or income-producing activity and making an assessment of income levels pre- and post-incident which gave rise to the cause of action.

Sometimes, this will involve understanding the requirements of any insurance policy, which governs the capacity and quantum of amounts to be claimed.

In some matters, the legal team may prefer to understand the potential quantum of a possible claim prior to progressing a statement of claim.

This may involve understanding the requirements of any insurance policy that governs claims and the quantum of amounts to be claimed.

Daniel Rands has extensive experience in the preparation of reports which quantify an economic loss in a format designed to assist the plaintiff’s legal team.

Insurance Claims

Engaged by the legal team for the defendant, normally an insurer, the role of the forensic expert is to assess the plaintiff’s claim under economic loss headings. Mostly this will be by reviewing the report of an accountant supporting a statement of claim, but the quantum of a claim can sometimes be made by a non-accountant.

Daniel Rands has extensive experience in assessing the methodology of plaintiff loss calculations and the underlying facts and assumptions in order to advise legal teams on the appropriateness of the claim.

In some instances, the starting point will be to understand the requirements of any insurance policy under which a claim has been made to ensure the claim is in accordance with its provisions. In many cases, Daniel Rands has had to separate issues that impacted pre- or post-incident income which are attributable to the incident giving rise to the claim from those that are not related to it.

Doing this requires a deeper understanding of the facts of the matter than can be obtained from merely looking at historical records.