Forensic Economics Engagement Process

The engagement agreement: scope, the conflict check, the retainer and the deadlines are fixed in writing before any data is opened, and the damages categories at issue are named so the inputs can be listed. Counsel sends the scheduling order or disclosure deadline with the file, and the earnings base is established from the records before any assumption is applied to it.

The earnings history and everything that documents it: pay records, tax returns and employment and benefits documentation for the pre-injury and, where it exists, the post-injury period. The vocational opinion where earning capacity is disputed and the life care plan where future care is claimed, because the economic analysis reduces their findings to present value. Any opposing economic report, with the deadline the analysis must meet.

The inputs are documents and published data rather than an interview. Earnings and benefits come from the claimant's records, worklife expectancy, earnings growth and discount rates from government data and peer-reviewed sources, household services from the task and hour analysis, and future care from the life care plan. Where the record is silent, the report states the assumption used and its source so either side can test it.

A written report that sets out each input, its source, the discounting method and the calculations, with past loss to the valuation date, future loss discounted to present value and a sensitivity analysis across reasonable assumption ranges, prepared to the admissibility and disclosure standards of the forum. Rebuttal analyses of opposing economic opinions follow as those reports are produced, and a planning-level version of the arithmetic is in the damages estimator.

Yes. A review engagement re-runs the opposing economist's analysis from its own inputs: the earnings base it starts from, the worklife and growth figures it assumes, the rate it discounts at, how it treats benefits and household services, and whether the arithmetic reproduces. The result is a written rebuttal, scoped when that report is produced and updated if the other side supplements it.

Christopher Skerritt, the Chief of Economic Services, oversees all forensic economic evaluations and analyses and testifies on the reports he prepares. His credentials are in vocational rehabilitation and economic consulting, and the work is performed with Kincaid Wolstein Economics, the affiliated firm for forensic economic analysis. The damages calculation insight walks through the method his reports apply, input by input.