Calculating Liquidated Damages- an example

We were recently asked to evaluate a case involving a breach of contract. In this case, we were asked to provide expert witness testimony on the appropriate value of liquidated damages at a temporary injunction hearing. The plaintiffs, which was a large state agency on the west coast, were suing an ex-employee for utilizing a proprietary database in breach of the written contract that the defendant had entered into several months prior with the state agency.

The state agency was in charge of revoking state issued professional licenses. The defendant was using the state agency's database to solicit and organize people, who had had their professional licenses removed, to sue the agency based on some relatively obscure open records and meetings law.

We were asked by the plaintiffs, the state agency, in the case to provide them with a value for the liquidated damages that they would seek in the event of a breach of contract and the defendant continued to use the database in violation of the restraining order.

The liquidated damages themselves were based on the potential harm that the defendant's use of the database could have caused the state agency. To perform our analysis, we looked at a number of cases that involved the calculation of liquidated damages, such as HONEY DEW ASSOCIATES, INC., AND BOWEN INVESTMENT, INC v. M & K FOOD CORP., IRWIN KAY AND ADELE KAY, APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND.

The key thing is that we had to make sure that our damage calculation has a basis.

More to come in the days to come...

Earnings and drug addiction - Help

We need some ideas on data sources for a case. Any help will be much appreciated

Here is the situation (from a popular list serv):

Assume a 20 year old woman, working as a sales clerk at a national known department store. She had been at the store for about one year. She was injured in an motor vehicle accident. It appears she will not be able to return to work.

Prior to the injury the young woman had dropped out of college, and was going through out patient rehabilitation for substance abuse. The woman had gone to college on an academic scholarship. She had very good grades until her addiction took control. She became heavily addicted to prescription drugs, left school, went through detox and became active in AA and NA.

She wanted to be more than one year sober before she returned to college so she took a job at the department store. Assume that the plaintiff is willing to let the world know of her addiction and the judge allows that into evidence.

Does anyone have any statistics or research reports on ex-addicts and their employment options / limitations/ etc?

What if her period of addiction was brief, only a few months?

What if this was her third time through rehab and her addiction has run off hand on for five years?

We will forward the answers and comments to the economist in need!