Contents: In this issue of The Expert Witness, we present two articles: The Cost of Household Services, Alberta, 2018: A Survey The cost of hiring individuals to perform household services such as housecleaning, snow removal, and handyman repairs can amount to a significant percentage of the damages in a personal injury or fatal accident claim. […]
Read More...Tag: Cost of Care
The Structure of a Cost of Care Report
Dr. Bruce and Ms. Rathje provide an economist’s perspective on various issues that arise in the presentation of cost of care reports. These include issues such as incremental costs, requirements that will vary over a plaintiff’s lifetime, the approach to ranges of estimates for costs or replacement frequencies, the costs of housekeepers and personal care attendants, and presentation. They also provide a sample calculation, to illustrate the issues discussed in the article.
Read More...Claims by Elderly Parents for Loss of Caregiving by Adult Children
The article addresses the fact that many adult children accept at least some responsibility for the provision of care to their aging parents. This leads to a possible claim by elderly parents for the loss of caregiving services, if an adult child is seriously injured or killed. The purpose of his article is to review some recent research that examines the factors that determine whether an adult child will care for an elderly parent.
Read More...Quantifying Soft Tissue Injury in Neck Injured Patients
This article was prepared by Dr. Gordon McMorland – a Calgary-based chiropractor and the director of the Canadian Whiplash Centre. Dr. McMorland discusses a new technology that can be used to effectively and objectively assess cervical range of motion and neck strength. Together, these measurements quantify the functional capacity of the neck.
Read More...Incorporating the Effect of Reduced Life Expectancy into Awards for Future Costs of Care
In this article David Strauss, Robert Shavelle, Christopher Pflaum, and Christopher Bruce argue that the method used by most economists and actuaries for calculating life expectancy among the seriously disabled is flawed. They argue that this method leads to the systematic overestimation of costs of future care. They show, for example, that the costs of care for plaintiffs with cerebral palsy are commonly overestimated by 10 to 15 percent. Strauss and Shavelle are able to provide life expectancy data that correct for this error.
Read More...The Income Tax Gross-Up on a Cost of Care Award
In this article Derek Aldridge and John Tobin discuss the various factors that affect the size of the tax gross-up on a cost of care award. Factors range from the plaintiff’s taxable income (including investment income from the award), to the proportion of the tax-creditable expenses, to the time path of the consumption of his/her cost of care award. Depending on these various factors, it is clear that the gross-up may be significant, thus making this calculation very worthwhile.
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