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Quantum evidence for claimants and defendants before the District Court and Local Court at Wollongong and the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney: lost profit, loss of value and lost chances, measured on a but-for case that survives the opposing expert's attack.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
In a Wollongong commercial claim, economic loss is the difference between the profit the business would have earned without the wrongful conduct and the profit it actually made, after crediting what it recovered or reasonably could have recovered. Lawyers decide causation and the measure; the expert rebuilds the but-for case from pre-dispute records and reports a range.
Most commercial disputes that reach a Wollongong solicitor turn on two questions: did the other side do wrong, and what did it cost? The first draws early attention; the second usually sets the number at mediation. Typical examples are a Port Kembla engineering subcontractor whose supply contract ended before the job finished, a Kiama cafe operator whose lease ended early, a Dapto builder whose project was held up by a supplier's failure to deliver, and a Crown Street practice that lost clients to a departing employee. A claim that overreaches hands the defendant its best argument; one measured carefully from documents is hard to discount.
Every claim is weakest at the but-for case. What the business actually earned is in its accounts. What it would have earned without the breach, the misrepresentation or the manager who left with key clients has to be reconstructed, and the opposing expert goes for that reconstruction first. It must fit the pleaded case, respect what the business could have produced and funded, and rest on records that predate the argument.
Quantifying loss uses valuation skills more than audit skills. The expert has to understand what generates the earnings and how they would have moved had the breach not occurred. Valuing an Unanderra manufacturer for sale and measuring what a cancelled contract did to it draw on the same knowledge, as do pricing a Port Kembla freight operator and measuring a lost haulage contract.
We act for claimants and respondents in the District Court and Local Court sitting at Wollongong, and in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney. Retail lease disputes can involve the NSW Small Business Commissioner, usually through mediation before any NCAT hearing, and a measured early view of the loss helps at that stage. We also review opposing quantum reports as consultants, and join experts' conferences, joint reports and concurrent evidence sessions.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Court decides whether the conduct caused the loss, and counsel chooses which measure of loss the cause of action supports. The expert prices the loss within those decisions, on the causal assumptions set out in the instructions. Where those assumptions are disputed, each alternative is calculated so the case still carries a figure whichever way the Court decides.
A model resting on a breach, start date or causal link that was never pleaded collapses before anyone checks the arithmetic. Every assumption comes from the pleadings and the letter of instruction, and the report records the source of each.
Most persuasive is what the business planned for itself when nothing was in dispute: budgets, board papers, lender submissions and plans prepared for other reasons. Past accounts, management reports, customer sales and industry data fill in the rest. A projection produced after the dispute by one side's expert carries the least weight.
Where the lost future is uncertain, the report offers alternative scenarios and shows which inputs move the answer. Each assumption can then be tested separately, and the conclusion still stands if the Court rejects one of them.
In the but-for world, extra sales usually need more people, space, equipment, stock or working capital than the business actually had, and competitors would have responded. Ignoring those limits inflates the claim, and the opposing expert will raise it first.
In the District Court, the Local Court and the Supreme Court of New South Wales, an expert must comply with the Expert Witness Code of Conduct in the court rules, which puts the expert's duty to the court ahead of any duty to the party paying the fee. Federal Court of Australia reports follow that Court's own practice note on expert evidence. In any forum the report must state its instructions, facts and assumptions, show reasoning a reader can trace and declare its limits. We prepare every quantum report to that standard, whether or not it is served.
The cause of action decides which measures are available, and counsel chooses among them. We apply the measure we are instructed to use and set out each step of the calculation.
Expectation loss is the ordinary contract measure: the profit the plaintiff would have earned if the contract had been carried out. Reliance loss covers expenditure made because of the conduct and then wasted. It is easier to prove, so it can be the stronger claim when lost profit looks speculative. Diminution in value sets what an asset is worth against what it would have been worth without the breach, and is the usual measure when a purchased business falls short of its warranties. We value it twice at completion, as warranted and as it really was, on one method and one set of market assumptions.
Loss of a commercial opportunity needs a value for the opportunity and a probability that it would have been realised, each supported by evidence such as bid records and past win rates. That is relevant in the Illawarra, where subcontractors and suppliers around Port Kembla tender for packages and a contract lost through another party's conduct can found a claim. Restraint of trade claims must separate clients lost because of the breach from those who would have gone anyway, and stop when the protected period ends. Business interruption asks whether income was lost or only deferred, and whether customer relationships suffered lasting harm needing separate measurement.
An opposing expert looks for these first, and each costs far less to fix before service than to defend in the witness box.
Quantum evidence is usually written to be served, read line by line by the opposing expert and, at trial, tested in cross-examination, so most loss engagements need a Detailed report. Earlier on, before proceedings start in the District Court or Local Court at Wollongong or the Supreme Court in Sydney, or while a lease dispute is with the NSW Small Business Commissioner, a party may only need a confidential view of the likely range to decide whether to sue, defend or make an offer.
Each report records the instructions, the causal assumptions adopted, the measure of loss applied and the documents relied on. It builds the but-for case step by step from named sources, isolates each assumption so it can be challenged on its own, shows how costs came off the lost revenue, deals with capacity and mitigation in the body of the report, tests for double counting and states the result as a range with its main drivers. Gaps in the evidence and other limits are placed where a reader will see them, not tucked in an appendix.
The certified valuer who signs the report meets the opposing expert, contributes to the joint report recording what is agreed and what is not, and gives evidence at trial, whether at the Wollongong courthouse or in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Sydney, alongside the other expert if the judge orders concurrent evidence. Where the parties agree on a single expert, we can act in that role and report to the Court rather than either side. For a defendant the same skills run in reverse: a critique of the plaintiff's report that finds unsupported assumptions and frames the questions to put is often the best value engagement, because an inflated claim tends to fail on its own figures.
If the assumption carrying most weight in this but-for case is rejected, what remains of the claim? An expert who has not isolated the assumptions cannot answer, and the opposing expert and the judge will ask it first.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.