Evaluation – What is a legal case worth?
The most important thing a client wants to know is how much his/her case is worth. Sometimes the assessment is fairly simple: there are monies owed pursuant to a contract that have not been paid. I recently had such a case in the context of public works construction. That case became more complicated, however, when additional elements of damages were factored into the equation. My client, a subcontractor, was also entitled to prompt payment penalties (Cal. Pub. Contract Code § 7107; Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 7108.5), interest, and attorney’s fees. Having a firm grasp on the underlying contract damages made the job of calculating the remaining damages much easier. At that point, the question became what the client would accept to resolve the case short of trial.
Some cases are not as easy to assess. For example, I have been working on a number of internet piracy cases. I have a client who is an industry leader in his field. He has registered copyrights on his web site content. In attempting to enter that field, several different entities and individuals have simply cut and pasted material from my client’s web site. Statutory damages for willful infringement of a copyright range from $200 to $150,000. (See http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html.) So if someone has taken 2-3 pages of copyrighted content verbatim, is that infringement worth $200 or $150,000? I have conducted extensive research for verdicts and settlements on these internet piracy cases to ascertain that the infringement may be worth anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000 per infringement. (Note: this assumes that there are no actual profits made by the infringer and/or actual damages incurred by my client.)
The value of a case may also change throughout the pendency of the litigation. I have had cases that appeared to be $100,000 cases when they came in the door only to find, through the discovery of adverse evidence, that the case was only worth $30,000. I have also had cases that appeared to be $200,000 cases that ultimately resolved for several times that amount. Sometimes the evidence falls in your favor, sometimes it doesn’t. There are always risks to litigation: There is the risk that evidence will be unearthed during discovery that is adverse to your claim or case. Then there is the risk that all of the evidence will fall in your favor, but a jury will not be sympathetic to you or your case.
One of the most important things I do is to minimize your risk, and to help you understand the level of risk. It is my job to constantly and continually evaluate and re-assess your case, and to communicate these assessments and evaluations to you. There are several steps I take to make sure we are headed down the right path. The first is to always understand the evidence as it currently stands. The second is to obtain the strongest evidence that will help us prove our case or disprove the opponent’s case. The third is to conduct whatever research is necessary or appropriate to ensure that we have the proper documentation to substantiate our position. The issue is not whether or not there are going to be curveballs; the issue is whether you can hit the curveballs when they inevitably come.
Read More