Reading an opposing economist's report is a different task from rebutting it. The reading comes first, it is done by counsel or by the retained economist, and its product is a short list: the inputs that drive the total, the source each one rests on or lacks, the records the report did not consider, and the questions that follow. Done in a fixed order, from the summary schedule back through each input to the records list, the reading takes a report of any length apart into a handful of choices that can be tested one at a time. This guide sets out that order, what to mark at each step, how to separate the method from the inputs, and what the reading should produce before any decision about a rebuttal report is made.
The narrative of a damages report explains; the schedules calculate. A reader who starts at page one reads the economist's account of the case, the qualifications, and the method before reaching the numbers, and by then the framing has done its work. Start instead at the summary schedule, usually the last exhibit, which states the total and divides it into its components: past and future lost earnings, fringe benefits, household services, and whatever else the claim carries. Note which component is largest, because the inputs behind it are the ones that matter, and note the split between past and future loss, because the future portion is where the growth, worklife, and discount assumptions live and the past portion is where the record either supports the figures or does not.
From the summary, work back to the schedule that produces each component. A well built report has one schedule per component, each showing the year, the but-for earnings, the actual or expected earnings, the difference, and the present value factor, with a total that ties to the summary. The components of an economic damages report post lists what each schedule should contain. A report whose schedules do not tie to its summary, or that presents a total with no schedules at all, has told the reader the first thing worth knowing about it.
Every report built for litigation lists the materials the economist considered, and federal practice requires that list in the written disclosure. Read it against the production. Records that were produced but do not appear on the list were not considered, and the report's figures cannot reflect them; records on the list that have not been produced to the other side are a discovery item before they are anything else. A list that names the complaint, a deposition transcript, and a few years of wage forms, for a claim that turns on a self-employed person's business, tells the reader where the earnings base came from before the base is examined.
The assumptions page is read the same way. Mark each assumption as one of three things: a fact the record supports, a fact the economist was told by counsel or the plaintiff, or a choice the economist made from published data. The report should say which, and where it does not, the deposition will have to. An assumed retirement age, a promotion that had not occurred, a return-to-work date, a household size, and a post-event earning level are the usual entries, and the disclosure rules guide explains why an assumption supplied by counsel is not improper but has to be identified as such.
The core of the reading is a table the reader builds, one row per input: the earnings base, the growth rate, the worklife horizon, the discount rate, the fringe benefit rate, the post-event earnings, and, in a death case, the personal consumption percentage. For each row, record the figure the report used, the record or published series it came from, the year or edition of that series, and whether the report explains the choice. Most of the rows will be filled in from the report's own text; the rows that cannot be filled in are the findings.
Each input has a known set of acceptable sources and a known set of questions. The earnings base should come from the wage forms, tax returns, and pay records, and the question is which years were used and why. The growth rate should come from a published wage or earnings series, and the question is whether it is nominal or real and whether it matches the discount rate's treatment of inflation, as the growth rate selection method explains. The worklife horizon should come from a published table for the person's age, sex, and education, and the question is whether the table value was adjusted and on what evidence, which the worklife expectancy method covers. The discount rate should rest on a stated class of securities and a stated period, and the present value method lists the choices. Where a report gives a figure without a source, or a source without a figure, the row is marked and the question is written.
Arithmetic errors are rarer than they once were, but they still occur, and a reader who recomputes one year of one schedule by hand, base times growth factor times discount factor, has either confirmed the schedule or found the most useful fact in the file. Beyond the arithmetic, the checks are for consistency. The growth rate and the discount rate must treat inflation the same way, both nominal or both real, and a report that grows earnings at a nominal rate and discounts at a real one has overstated the loss, while the reverse understates it; the net versus gross discount rate comparison shows what to look for. The valuation date, the date past loss ends and future loss begins, should be the same on every schedule and should match the expected trial date the report names.
Consistency extends to the facts. A report that assumes full-time work to the worklife horizon in the earnings schedule and a reduced household size in the consumption schedule, or that values employer health coverage at a family rate for a person the wage forms show as single, has made choices that do not fit together. Each such mismatch is a question, and the questions often matter more than any single input, because an opposing economist can defend a choice but cannot easily defend two choices that contradict each other.
Nearly every dispute between economists is about inputs, not method. The method, projecting a but-for earnings stream, subtracting the expected actual stream, and discounting the difference, is the same in every competent report, and a challenge aimed at the method itself seldom succeeds under either the reliability framework or the general-acceptance framework, as the federal versus state court admissibility guide explains. What the frameworks do reach is an input with no support in the record or in published data, and that is what the reading has been looking for. A report that uses an accepted method with an unsupported earnings base is exposed on the base, not on the method, and the reading should say so plainly rather than describe the whole report as unreliable.
The one method question worth asking is whether the report used a method the venue does not permit or omitted one it requires: total offset where the venue has rejected it, gross earnings where the venue requires after-tax figures, a consumption deduction in an injury case, or no deduction in a death case. Those are legal framework questions, and the reader's note is that the framework was or was not followed, with the input that would change if it had been.
The product of the reading is three lists and a decision. The first list is the inputs with no source, no explanation, or no support in the record, each stated as a question for the opposing economist's deposition. The second is the records the report did not consider and the records it names that have not been produced, each a discovery request. The third is the sensitivities: for each contested input, what the total becomes if the input is replaced by the one the record supports, which a retained economist can compute in an afternoon from the report's own schedules and which tells counsel where the money is. In a personal injury matter venued in New York, or in any venue, the sensitivities are what settle the question of whether the dispute is worth a second report.
The decision is whether a rebuttal report is needed, and the reading answers it. Where the opposing report's inputs are supported and its arithmetic is sound, the reading may show that the figure is defensible and that the dispute belongs elsewhere in the case. Where one or two inputs carry the total and the record does not support them, a rebuttal report that replaces those inputs and shows the result is the usual next step, and the report review service describes how that work proceeds from the lists the reading produced. The reading is the same whether the report under review was written for the plaintiff or for the defense; the questions do not change with the side that asks them.
The summary schedule, then the schedule behind each component of the total. The schedules are the calculation, and reading them first shows which inputs carry the figure before the narrative frames them. The records list and the assumptions page come next, and the narrative is read last, as the economist's explanation of choices the reader has already identified.
Each input with no stated source or no support in the record, each assumption that was supplied by counsel or the plaintiff rather than drawn from a document, each produced record the report does not list, and each place where two schedules make choices that contradict each other. Those marks become the deposition questions, the discovery requests, and the sensitivities a retained economist computes.
Usually not for the reading itself, because a complete report states its inputs and sources on its face and the reading tests whether it does. The workpapers matter afterward, to see how a schedule was computed where the report does not show it, to find a data series the report names without an edition, and to confirm which records were actually examined.
Request a consultation on How to Read an Opposing Economist's Report or call (201) 343-0700. Plaintiff and defense counsel.