Our Beginning in the Litigation Arena

Our begin­ning in the lit­i­ga­tion arena was not inten­tional but came about in an effort to pro­vide some much needed ser­vice to a client going through a divorce in Judge Munson's court in Pulaski County. We had worked exten­sively in the merger and acqui­si­tion area and were well grounded in what com­pa­nies were worth. The client had an elec­tri­cal con­struc­tion com­pany that needed to be val­ued and we were able to pro­vide that ser­vice to him. His attor­ney was a gen­tle­man by the name of Dale Price. Get­ting to know him was one of our great­est per­sonal and pro­fes­sional experiences.

In the course of the divorce, the wife moved to an island in the Caribbean and com­muted back and forth when nec­es­sary. Depo­si­tions were taken the night before the trial was to begin and a set­tle­ment was reached late in the evening. As soon as the set­tle­ment was read into the record, the wife departed for the Caribbean. The next day my client was informed that she suf­fered an acci­dent and slipped into a coma. She had been trans­ported to Miami and was on life sup­port. Over the next few weeks the hos­pi­tal rec­om­mended that life sup­port be removed but due to the nature of the case, no one could deter­mine who her near­est rel­a­tive was. There was mass con­fu­sion about when a divorce is final and if they were still legally mar­ried. Even­tu­ally the needs of the fam­ily over­came the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions and my client trav­eled to Miami to give the needed approvals.

In addi­tion to the tim­ing of the divorce sub­se­quent issues arose that caused the case to be revis­ited almost in its entirety.  The case began a long and ardu­ous legal jour­nal up and down the legal sys­tem until many years later the case was finally able to be put to bed. It is now the author­ity on when a divorce is finalized.

Dur­ing this time, we became close friends with Dale Price and he pro­ceeded to hire us on all of his cases. We went on to obtain sev­eral cer­ti­fi­ca­tions in busi­ness val­u­a­tion and lit­i­ga­tion sup­port. Now 18 years later, our prac­tice has grown to be one of the main lines of ser­vice we pro­vide with a wide vari­ety of cases, dis­putes and valuations.

60 per­cent of the firm's lit­i­ga­tion work is mar­i­tal or fam­ily law, the remain­ing per­cent­age is com­prised of foren­sic and fraud account­ing, expla­na­tion of com­plex finan­cial struc­tur­ing and oper­a­tions, per­sonal injury dam­age cal­cu­la­tions and com­mer­cial dam­ages. We believe that lit­i­ga­tion related activ­i­ties should remain unbi­ased so there­fore, we will tes­tify for either the plain­tiff or defendant.

This month's Jour­nal of Accoun­tancy explores "Wad­ing into Lit­i­ga­tion Sup­port", how CPA con­sul­tants can uncover the flaws in an oppos­ing side’s expert wit­ness reports. One state­ment in this arti­cle really rings true; once a CPA takes the stand as an expert wit­ness, his or her qual­i­fi­ca­tions and work prod­uct are exposed to intense scrutiny.  Rep­u­ta­tion and qual­ity of prod­uct when ren­der­ing an opin­ion before your client, the court and oppos­ing coun­sel is a con­stant chal­lenge and should never be tossed up to fate. Lit­i­ga­tion sup­port and expert wit­ness work is inter­est­ing, chal­leng­ing and very reward­ing, but there a per­ils lurk­ing there that a CPA is not exposed to in nor­mal type of attest work.