Commercial Litigation and Damages

Business Interruption and Lost Earnings Claims

Business interruption insurance covers loss of profit when a business experiences damage to covered facilities from a covered peril, resulting in the inability to fully execute the firm’s business. Most business interruption coverage is written on an “actual loss sustained” basis, meaning that measuring the associated loss of earnings requires the comparison of actual earnings during the period of loss to the expected earnings had no loss occurred, also called the but-for earnings. Disputes between insured and insurer can arise when the parties disagree on the size of the covered loss. Many such disputes center on the assessment of the but-for earnings and how that relates to any forecasts the firm might have had.

NERA experts have significant experience and expertise in the accounting and economic analyses that can provide independent, fact-based assessments useful in resolving business interruption disputes. Our business interruption experts include accountants adept at analyzing historical accounting records, company work papers, and insurer work papers to provide a full understanding of the insurer’s investigation. We have deep industry knowledge and sophisticated quantitative skills to develop analyses that can disentangle the effects of multiple forces on expected earnings, and can quantify loss mitigation and other related issues. The result is a forecast model which rests on credible, fact-based assessments rather than intuition and straightforward extrapolation.