Consulting Services

Consulting Services

Fannon Valuation Group provides consulting services so that you can feel assured that the damages part of your case is under control. A clear, independent review of your expert’s work can ensure that positions taken and calculations made are reliable and relevant.

We can help alleviate the uncertainty and escalating costs that financial claims bring. The 2008 Interim Report on the Joint Project of The American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System found that “Expert witness fees are a significant cost factor driving litigants to settle, ranking just slightly behind trial costs and attorneys fees”. For those cases not settling, a 2007 (most recent available) PriceWaterhouseCoopers study (available at pwc.com) finds financial experts being excluded at an alarming rate: In 2007, 41% of all challenges to financial experts were successful at excluding the expert’s testimony in whole or in part.

As Cooner and Reister observed in the May 2009 edition of Daubert On-Line, “…securing credible scientific testimony and challenging your opponent’s experts is critical to success.” With expert exclusion so firmly engrained as trial strategy in mind, the cost of having your financial expert excluded or undermined can be devastating to your case, and perhaps the highest price you or your client will incur.

We have reviewed hundreds of financial expert reports, and as a result, seen many of the issues that cause experts to fail. We have also done extensive research on motions to exclude financial experts, and can help you keep your expert in the case in the face of these mounting exclusions.

Our “Expert Retention and Consulting Services” include:

Document review for financial damage claim
Identification of the need for other experts to support financial expert testimony
Assistance, where necessary, with the retention of financial experts
Review of financial expert report
Identify potential “Daubert” areas of attack
Review opposing expert’s reports
Identification of potential issues for motion to exclude opposing expert
Assist in preparation for deposition of opposing expert
Assist in preparation for trial

Fannon Valuation Group is nationally known for our substantive contributions to the fields of lost profits damages, motions to exclude financial experts, and business valuation of private and public companies. We have valued hundreds of companies and have testified as damage and valuation experts in federal and state courts.

We teach lost profits damages frequently to lawyers, judges, and to our peers at national and local conferences and seminars, and have been published in several journals on the topic. In June 2009 we published, The Comprehensive Guide to Lost Profits Damage—Attorney and Expert Reference Book, bringing together some of the top financial experts and lawyers in the country as contributing authors. Our latest text, The Impact of Taxes on Value in the Private Capital Markets, is currently under peer review, and is expected to be published in 2010. We have authored, contributed to, or technically reviewed numerous other key valuation and damage textbooks.