Free Consultation
Book a Free Consultation
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
We measure lost profit, diminution in value and lost opportunity for plaintiffs and defendants in the Supreme Court of Queensland, the District Court of Queensland and the Federal Court, with a but-for case that is built to survive cross-examination.
Indicative valuations from A$799. Certified Summary and Detailed reports from seven business days.
Economic loss in a Brisbane commercial dispute is the gap between what a business actually earned and what it would have earned had the conduct complained of not occurred. Counsel instructs on causation and the measure of loss; the expert prices the loss as profit rather than revenue, deducts mitigation and presents a range of outcomes.
A commercial claim asks whether the other side breached a duty and, if it did, how much that breach cost. Liability gets most of the attention early on, yet in the Brisbane matters we work on, from a freight contract ended early at Eagle Farm to a subcontractor squeezed off a civil works package, a franchise dispute at North Lakes or a shop lease in Fortitude Valley terminated mid-term, the money question usually decides where the case settles. An overstated claim with clear liability gives the defendant something to attack. A measured claim backed by documents is hard to ignore.
Everything rests on the but-for case. The accounts record what did happen. What would have happened without the breach, the misleading conduct or the employee who took the client list has to be reconstructed, and that reconstruction is the target for the opposing expert. It must follow the pleadings, stay within what the business could physically and financially have delivered, and draw on records made before the dispute began.
Measuring a loss uses the same thinking as valuing a business, not the thinking of an audit. The expert has to know what produces the earnings and how they would have behaved if the breach had never happened. Valuing a Newstead software company for sale and measuring the harm done to it by a lost contract call on the same understanding, as do valuing a TradeCoast logistics operator and pricing a broken supply agreement.
We act for plaintiffs and defendants in the Supreme Court of Queensland, including matters on its Commercial List, in the District Court of Queensland and in the Federal Court at its Brisbane registry. We also review the other side's quantum report as consultants, and take part in expert conferences, joint reports and concurrent evidence.
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 decides which measure of loss the cause of action allows. The expert works within those choices, pricing the loss on the causal assumptions in the letter of instruction and, where they are in dispute, calculating each alternative so the case still has a number if the Court takes another view.
The best evidence is what the business forecast for itself while all was well: budgets, board minutes, finance applications and plans written for other purposes. Past accounts, management reports, revenue by customer and industry information complete the picture. A forecast prepared after the event by one party's expert carries the least weight.
If the model assumes a breach, a commencement date or a causal chain that the pleadings do not allege, it fails before anyone checks the sums. We work from the pleadings and the instructions, and the report records the source of every assumption.
Additional sales in the but-for case normally need more staff, floor space, vehicles, stock or working capital than the business held, and rivals would not have stood still. Leave those constraints out and the loss is overstated, which gives the other expert an easy opening.
When the lost future is uncertain, the report presents alternative scenarios and identifies the inputs that drive the result, so each assumption can be examined separately and the conclusion still stands if the Court rejects one.
In the Supreme Court of Queensland and the District Court of Queensland, expert evidence is governed by Chapter 11 Part 5 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld). The expert's duty to assist the court overrides any duty to the party who pays, and the rules favour a single expert on an issue where that is practicable. A report for the Federal Court follows that Court's expert evidence practice note. Under either regime the report must disclose its instructions, facts and assumptions, show reasoning a reader can follow and state its limits plainly. We prepare every quantum report to that standard, whether or not it is ever served.
Which measures are available depends on the cause of action, and choosing between them is a matter for counsel. Our role is to apply the measure we are instructed on and to show each step of the arithmetic.
Diminution in value compares what an asset is worth with what it would have been worth without the breach. It is the usual claim when a purchased business turns out not to match its warranties: we value it twice at the completion date, as represented and as it really was, using one method and one set of market assumptions. Expectation loss, the ordinary contract measure, is the profit the plaintiff would have made if the contract had been performed. Reliance loss is money spent because of the conduct and now wasted; it is simpler to prove and can be the safer claim when the lost profit is too uncertain to support.
Restraint of trade claims have to separate customers lost because of the breach from those who would have moved anyway, and are limited to the period the restraint would have protected. Loss of a commercial opportunity needs two figures, the value of the opportunity and the chance it would have been won, each supported by evidence such as tender records and historical success rates. That evidence matters for Queensland contractors bidding for work in the infrastructure program ahead of the 2032 Games, where a tender lost through another party's conduct can become the subject of a claim. Business interruption asks whether income was lost or only deferred, and whether customer relationships suffered lasting harm that has to be measured separately.
An opposing expert checks for these before anything else, and each costs far less to correct before the report is served than to defend after.
A quantum report is usually written to be served, examined line by line by the other side's expert and, if the case runs, tested in the witness box, so most loss matters call for the Detailed report. Earlier on, before a claim is filed in the Supreme Court of Queensland or the District Court, a party may only need a confidential sense of the likely range to decide whether to sue, defend or offer.
Each report sets out the instructions received, the causal assumptions adopted, the measure of loss used and the documents relied on. It builds the but-for case one step at a time from identified sources, separates each assumption so it can be challenged on its own, shows how costs were deducted from the lost revenue, addresses capacity and mitigation in the main text, checks for double counting and gives the result as a range with the key drivers identified. Gaps in the evidence and other limitations appear where a reader will find them, not in a back appendix.
The certified valuer who signs the report meets the other side's expert, contributes to the joint report that records the points agreed and in dispute, and gives evidence, concurrently if the Supreme Court of Queensland so directs, should the matter reach trial. Where the rules lead the parties to a single expert, we can act in that role and write for the Court rather than for either side. For a defendant the same skills work in reverse: a critique of the plaintiff's report that exposes unsupported assumptions and suggests the questions to ask is often the most cost-effective engagement, because an inflated claim tends to fail on its own numbers.
If the Court rejects the assumption that does the most work in this but-for case, how much of the claim survives? An expert who has not separated the assumptions has no answer, and that answer is precisely what the other side's expert and the trial judge will ask for.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.