Overview
Personal injury and wrongful death litigation is commonly the result of alleged incidents of medical malpractice, workplace accidents, product liability, premises liability, automobile accidents, and slip and fall. Such lawsuits are among the most common in the U.S., creating a litigation market estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars each year. Owing to the sheer volume of such suits, attorneys — as well as the economic experts they often rely on — have developed simplistic methods to quickly arrive at estimates of economic damages. While the effect of such simplistic methods may be relatively benign in a routine low-stakes injury claim, the same simplistic methods are often applied to catastrophic injury cases, leading to incorrect valuations when millions or even tens of millions of dollars are at stake. As settlements and jury verdicts for injury actions continue to climb, it is vital that attorneys and their clients have reliable experts trained in sound economic methods, who can effectively communicate with judges, juries, and other key stakeholders.
The experts at Cirque Analytics are highly trained specialists in the injury and death litigation arena, having testified and consulted on hundreds of such cases in many U.S. states, in both Federal and State courts. Our experts are knowledgable in labor and human capital economics, price theory, inflation forecasting, and present value assessments. Not only do our experts create reliable estimates of economic damages based on generally accepted economic methods, but they are highly effective at identifying the weaknesses in an opposing economists’ analysis, and clearly communicating their findings. Cirque’s experts have testified on all forms of damages related to personal injury and wrongful death, in both individual and mass tort litigation.
Cirque Analytics by the Numbers
Testimonies in deposition or trial.
With deposition and trial testimony experience.
Petabytes of data used for litigation and insights.
Collective years experience consulting.
Areas of Expertise & Focus
Damages Analysis
While no two cases are exactly the same, and one-size-fits-all approaches rarely hold up in court, many personal injury and wrongful death cases involve similar types of analyses, computational requirements, and legal and economic frameworks. For example, the experts at Cirque Analytics are frequently asked to analyze economic damages related to:
Lost Earnings (Past or Future): Our experts apply the principles and methods of human capital economics in evaluating lost earnings and earning capacity. Such analyses incorporate indiviualized information taken from tax returns and employment records, as well as statistical information derived from national surveys, such as the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Experts employ regression analysis to estimate lifetime earnings profiles, accounting for wage growth due to expected promotions and merit increases, as well as inflation.
Fringe Benefits: Our experts evaluate the loss of fringe benefits, including lost retirement and pension benefits, lost health insurance benefits, and lost Social Security benefits. Information derived from individual employment records, as well as data and tools published by other private and public entities guide our analyses of lost fringe benefits.
Income Taxes: To reliably estimate income tax obligations, our experts rely on information provided in individual and business tax returns, along with highly reliable tools created by the National Bureau of Economic Research and used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Personal Consumption: When estimating lost income in a wrongful death case, the loss is often measured from the perspective of survivors or the estate. In such cases, the loss of income is net of the amount of money that would have been spent to support the decedent’s standard of living (i.e., personal consumption or personal maintenance). Our experts utilize consumption data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey and equivalence scales to reliably estimate such expenditures.
Non-Market Services: A common element of economic loss in injury and death claims is that of lost non-market services. In principle, this covers the loss of any service in the household that could be replaced in the market. Our experts are trained in evaluating such losses, and appropriately assigning value to them based on generally accepted economic principles and methods.
Future Cost of Care (Life Care Plans): We are often asked to estimate the future cost of care for injured persons, based on the costs outlined in a life care plan. Our experts apply economic principles to evaluate the appropriateness of the prices assigned by life care planners. We also project how the prices will change in future years, relying on the best available published forecasts of future inflation.
Present Value: In a present value calculation, a discount rate is used to convert the year-by-year projected future losses into a single lump sum. Our experts apply economic principles to build an appropriate discount rate, accounting for the time value of money and other risk factors.
Rebuttal of Opposing Experts: Errors from opposing experts come in many forms – from basic computational errors, to inappropriate methods, to attempts to assign economic value to non-economic losses (e.g., hedonic damages). Whatever their form, our experts will identify these errors and effectively communicate why and how such errors lead to an inaccurate assessment of economic damages.
Meet Our Personal Injury & Wrongful Death Experts
D. Scott Bosworth, M.S., CFA
Scott Bosworth has 17 years of experience as both a testifying expert and a consulting expert in a broad…
Sam Lundstrom, Ph.D.
Dr. Lundstrom is a Vice President at Cirque Analytics, and has extensive experience as both an economic consulting expert…
Josh Brown, M.S.
Josh Brown has over ten years of experience in economic consulting. He is currently a Manager at Cirque Analytics.…