Expert witness work: Sub-Specialties

I have various areas of sub-specialty, as a result of working on multiple cases in the area, or having many hours of education or work experience in the areas. 

These are my sub-specialties:

  • CPA/CFO malpractice, fiduciary, Board, standard of care
  • Securities (SEC reporting)
  • Usury/debt/banking
  • Valuations-business, goodwill, IP etc.
  • Forensic-general accounting, partnership, partition 
  • Divorce
  • Torts: Personal injury, employment, conversion, Defamation
  • Contract breaches: Damages, Lost profits, non compete
  • M&A
  • Referee/Receiver
  • Dental, Restaurants
  • Trust law/elder abuse calculations
  • Cannabis/Sports/Entertainment

I will examine several of these categories here.

Dental
I am currently working on a dental case, after having worked on multiple cases in the same area. This case is about a dentist who left a practice that he had purchased part of due to the fact that he wasn’t making much money. 
There are valuation issues in the case-each time I value the business as of a different date I get a similar result. At issue here are things such as theft of shares/conversion. Perhaps another thing should have been plead-misrepresentation of material facts as the purchaser didn’t know his income would drop dramatically-if he had known he likely wouldn’t have made the acquisition.

CPA standard of care/tax
I’m also working on a tax case in which the CPA overstated income, resulting in a $700k extra tax bill for plaintiff. The main issues seem to be related to statute of limitations-when should plaintiff have discovered the issue (perhaps never?) and the subsequent CPA’s work. There is a noticeable lack of focus on the original CPA-why was the error made and responsibilities for damages as a result. Apparently insurance wasn’t notified in time so that’s one less avenue for recovery.

Specifically, the subsequent CPA regurgitated the incorrect numbers to a state tax auditor on an unrelated matter. The question seems to be-was he supposed to audit what he was reporting? It doesn’t seem reasonable to me, but rather seems a way to point fingers. The error was somewhat ‘hidden in plain site’-meaning once a CPA is told about it it’s much easier to discover (absent an audit).

It will be interesting to see how these cases resolve. Also currently working on a Cannabis case, two employment ones, a military one, another CPA malpractice case and a restaurant one. Currently talking with attorneys about a new partition engagement and other forensic/valuation work.